Secrets and Lies
by Hikaru8
Summary: Lily Barton comes to Japan to continue her schooling and to hopfully see her father who she hasn't see in nine years. But with basket case rock stars, an anime loving best friend and a black mercedes trailing her, she just might be in over her head.
1. Default Chapter

Secrets and Lies  
  
"The plane will soon be taking off. All passengers please take their seats and fasten their seat belts," the voice over the intercom said politely.  
  
The girl jamming her keyboard into the overhead compartment tried to hurry up but she wasn't doing too well.  
  
She was standing on the top of two of the blue first class chairs as she tried to heave her beloved instrument into the compartment while holding her ticket in her mouth.  
  
"Here I'll help you," someone behind her said politely in Japanese.  
  
The girl jumped off the seats and held onto the man's guitar as he crammed her keyboard in and closed the hatch.  
  
He had long red-brown hair and was standing with two companions.  
  
"Thanks a lot," the girl said gratefully and handed the young man his guitar.  
  
"No problem," he said with a smile and turned to his friend with pink hair, indicating to the seat next to the girl. "This is your seat Shuichi."  
  
"Huh? Then were are you and Fujisaki sitting?"  
  
"Well, actually, the travel agent couldn't get us all seats together. Imagine that! How extremely unlikely!"  
  
'That guy's a terrible liar,' the girl thought as she fastened her seatbelt.  
  
"Hey Hiro, that's what you guys said on the plane over here. And on all the buses and trains we took too. Hey wait a minute!" the man known as Shuichi said with a frown. "Gotta go," Hiro said quickly, heaving his guitar over his shoulder before he and Fujisaki dashed down the aisle.  
  
"You guys suck," Shuichi grumbled under his breath and sat down in the seat opposite the young teenager who was now reading a heavy textbook.  
  
He tapped her on the shoulder and she pulled her head up out of the book, her short brown ponytail slapping the back of her neck a bit as she turned to him.  
  
"It's gonna be a long flight so we might as well get introduced. I'm Shindo Shuichi and I'm on my way home. How about you?" Shuichi said holding out his hand.  
  
"Hi I'm Lily Barton, nice ta meet ya!" the girl said taking his hand with a smile. "I'm heading to Japan to start my second year of middle school."  
  
The plane started to move just then and Shuichi's grip on Lily's hand tightened considerably.  
  
"Oh really? Your Japanese is excellent. I could have sworn that you were in America as a tourist," he said breaking out into a sweat.  
  
"You're overestimating my skills Shindo san," Lily said blushing slightly as the plane sped up.  
  
"No way, your pronunciation is perfect," he said brightly with his hand still clutching Lily's. "Do you have family in Japan or something?"  
  
Before she could answer, the plane took off and Shuichi's grip got a whole lot tighter.  
  
***  
  
"Here you go Miss," the airline hostess said as she handed Lily a bag of ice.  
  
"Thanks," Lily said and placed the ice on her bruised hand.  
  
"I'm so sorry," Shuichi said for what must have been the thousandth time in the past ten minutes.  
  
"Relax Shindo-san," Lily said with a smile as she nursed her hand, "your nerves just got the better of you. Nothing to stress over."  
  
Shuichi smiled and relaxed back into his seat. Now that the plane was in the air, he seemed to be coping well.  
  
'No wonder his friends don't sit next to him,' Lily thought, 'this guy has some serious flying issues. Maybe they were showing 'Horror on Flight 964' in the airport waiting lounge?'  
  
"Anyway," Shuichi said bringing her back to the moment, "are your parents Japanese?"  
  
"No they're both American, but my Dad's lived and worked in Japan for years. I used to live with my grandmother on her cattle farm in the countryside, but now I've saved enough to continue school in Japan. So now I'm on my way," she said brightly.  
  
'She's really got some determination and direction in her life if she saved all of that money just to put herself though school. I quit school to be a full time member of Bad Luck, but it seems that she wants to learn more then anything,' the rock start thought to himself.  
  
"Are you going to be staying with your Dad in Tokyo?" he asked in order to keep the conversation flowing.  
  
Lily went really quiet and looked down at her runners. Slowly her uncrushed hand reached up to her ear, her fingers running over the small silver earcuff that was clipped there.  
  
"Um, no actually," she said softly. "Work keeps Dad really busy so I've never really seen him much. I'll be staying with one of his friends while I'm at school."  
  
"Oh I see," Shuichi said uncomfortably. It was as if this area of conversation wasn't a particularly good one for Lily. She almost sounded sad when she spoke.  
  
"Well anyway," he said brightly to try and lift the new mood on the conversation. "I'm sure you'll love Tokyo, there's this ice cream place I go to and it sells..."  
  
"Could all passengers and cabin crew please take their seats, thank you," the pilot's voice interrupted over the intercom.  
  
"That's a little odd," Lily said as she tightened her seatbelt a bit. "They never usually ask the cabin crew to sit during the flight."  
  
"Oh I'm sure it's nothing," Shuichi said, trying to sound confident and failing miserably.  
  
He lifted a cup of water to show that he was relaxed and Lily shouldn't worry, but all the water spilt on his clothes due to his shaking hand.  
  
"You'll be Ok," Lily said with a reassuring smile and patted his arm.  
  
He would have been too if the plane hadn't decided to drop 300 feet at that very moment.  
  
"Aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!" Shuichi's scream could not only be heard loud and clear through the entire first class section, but all passengers in business and economy got a full blast as well.  
  
'There he goes,' Hiro thought from the other end of the first class section as he continued to flick through his in flight magazine. 'Knew those lungs wouldn't fail him.'  
  
"Poor girl," mumbled Fujisaki and took another biscuit.  
  
"We're all gonna die!" Shuichi screamed and jumped up in his seat, busting his seatbelt buckle as the plane continued to act as a yo-yo.  
  
"Shindo san!" Lily yelled grabbing hold of his arm.  
  
"How the hell can you be so calm?" he screamed at a couple sitting opposite who were helping themselves to another glass of champagne as if they were at the racetrack.  
  
"Shindo san please clam down!" Lily begged, pulling on his sleeve.  
  
"Are you all right sir?" an air steward asked, looking at the young man jumping up and down in his seat.  
  
"No I am not!" Shuichi yelled at him. "I spent an entire week working eighteen hours straight every day on the new album and three weeks making a video clip where no one spoke a single work of Japanese! And to cap it all off my English speaking capability is zero! Yaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!"  
  
"Shindo san you're scaring the other passengers," Lily cried and stood up.  
  
She grabbed him by the shoulders and tried to wrestle him back into his seat, but Shuichi continued to kick and scream like a cornered rat.  
  
"Give me something sharper then this plastic cutlery damn it! I wanna slit my throat before we're all blown up in a blazing inferno!"  
  
'This is gonna be a long trip,' Lily groaned mentally.  
  
**********************************************  
  
Lily spent the rest of the flight lifting cups of water to Shuichi's mouth and fanning him to with bits of paper she'd torn out of the in flight magazine.  
  
Shuichi had refused to calm down so having to resolve to violent measures, Lily had bashed him over the head with 'JAPANESE VOCAB FOR PROS BOOK FOUR.'  
  
Ruthless yet, effective.  
  
It had been very embarrassing having to listen to the other passenger's and their snide remarks.  
  
"Surely there must be some kind of medication he could be taking," one had said.  
  
"Reckon he escaped from somewhere?" another asked.  
  
"Wonder what that idiot's trying to smuggle into the country?" one guy had said. "Looks like he sampled some of it."  
  
At that last comment 'JAPANESE VOCAB FOR PROS BOOK FOUR' had gotten airborne and the chosen victim had said a few things that weren't listed in Lily's Japanese dictionary upon impact.  
  
When the plane landed at Tokyo airport, Lily slung the shoulder strap on her keyboard case over her head so her keyboard was strapped to her back and helped Shuichi walk off the plane.  
  
"Does he need a wheelchair or some medical attention?" one of the air stewards asked her.  
  
"Nah, but some Valium would have been helpful when he was bouncing off the walls," she muttered.  
  
"So Shuichi, how was the flight?" Hiro asked brightly as Lily and the half concious Shuichi met him and Fujisaki at the luggage terminal.  
  
Shuichi gave a low groan that sounded suspiciously like "You bastard" before he let all of his weight fall on Lily.  
  
His full weight was too much for her to handle and she started to fall with a yelp.  
  
Hiro grabbed Shuichi and Fujisaki caught Lily before she hit the ground.  
  
"Thanks," she said gratefully to the youngest of the three companions and started searching for her luggage.  
  
Lily grabbed her two suitcases off the conveyer belt and was about to say her good byes to Shuichi when a shot rang out.  
  
People ran around screaming and a few were even crying for their mothers. The entire airport was in uproar as everyone was pushing past one another to hide under seats or just simply get out.  
  
"Clear the way, clear the way!" someone yelled clearly as more shots followed the first.  
  
Lily whirled around so fast her sunglasses that had been propped up on her head fell off and she dropped her luggage.  
  
"K san! This is a high security area! How'd you get that thing in here?" Hiro demanded as Shuichi hung off his neck.  
  
"An old Secret Service title still has some pull in places like this," the maniac gunman said as his smile covered his entire face.  
  
K put his gun back in its holster and pried Shuichi off of Hiro.  
  
"Shu-chan!" he cried, tears swelling in his eyes, "I've missed you so much! It's been ages since we last communicated!"  
  
"What do you mean?" Hiro asked with a frown as Shuichi hung limply in K's grip. "You never left us alone when we were gone! You sent us e-mails, text messages, called every four hours, sent letters and even a telegraph!"  
  
"Don't forget the two messenger pigeons as well," Fujisaki chipped in. "They dropped dead from exhaustion after we go the notes by the way."  
  
"Well none of that is the same as actually seeing you," K said waving his hand. "By the way, what happened to Shuichi? His hug seems a bit empty."  
  
"Air turbulence," Hiro said with a sigh. "But thankfully this girl did a great job looking after him."  
  
Hiro placed his hand on Lily's head and K looked up.  
  
He looked at Lily with amazement for a second before he dropped Shuichi on the floor and smiled.  
  
"Gee you've grown," he said brightly.  
  
"Huh?" Lily, Hiro and Fujisaki said in unison. Shuichi let out a low groan.  
  
"Well best be off! Work to do!" K said cheerfully and pulled his gun out again. Lily cringed at the sight of the Cougar Magnum.  
  
"Let's go!" he said in English and grabbed Shuichi off the floor.  
  
Hiro and Fujisaki said good bye before they followed K out of the airport, who had Shuichi tucked under his arm.  
  
"I'm really having second thoughts about coming here," Lily groaned.  
  
**********************************************  
  
"What was that about K san?" Fujisaki asked from the back seat as K weaved in and out of traffic.  
  
"What was what about?" he asked brightly in a clueless tone.  
  
"You saying that that girl had grown. Do you know her or something?" Hiro asked from beside Fujisaki.  
  
"Lily," Shuichi groaned as whatever mental stability he had had before his breakdown (which wasn't a hell of a lot) slowly came back to him. "Her name is Lily."  
  
"Lily Barton to be exact. Or as she will now say since she's in Japan, Barton Lily," K said as he steered with one hand, the other holding a cigarette.  
  
"Eh? How'd you know?" Shuichi asked as he rubbed his head. He could feel a migraine coming on.  
  
"I know her dad," K replied flicking some ash out the window.  
  
"And who's her dad?" Shuichi asked.  
  
K pulled up to a red light and looked at his passengers with a grin. 'This reaction was gonna be priceless' he thought with glee.  
  
He told them.  
  
"YOU GOTTA BE BULLSHITING ME!!!"  
  
**********************************************  
  
'Suguchi san sure is late,' Lily thought as she looked at her watch yet again.  
  
Shuichi and his friends had left about two hours ago, and since then she'd been sitting on her suitcase in the arrivals lounge.  
  
She'd been making trips to the can machine down the hall every twenty minutes or so, but that wasn't even vaguely interesting any more.  
  
Therefore needing a new source of amusement, Lily dug into her suitcase and brought out a bag of jelly snakes that her grandmother had packed as part of her emergency sugar supply.  
  
She placed one in her mouth and started to think about her encounter with Shuichi's trigger- happy friend.  
  
'What does he mean I've grown?' she thought with a frown. 'I don't even know that guy! Is he some kind of sick stalker?'  
  
"Lily chan!" she heard someone yell.  
  
Lily spat the jelly snake out of her mouth and looked up. Across the arrivals lounge she could make out a blonde man wearing a hat and long coat hurrying towards her.  
  
"So sorry I'm late," he gasped when he reached her. It was obvious that he'd been running to meet her.  
  
"I got caught up at the office and Mika called. Have you been waiting long?"  
  
He then saw the jelly snake tied in a perfect knot sitting in her hand.  
  
"I guess you were," he said with amusement.  
  
Lily laughed nervously and put her hand behind her back.  
  
"It's a talent," she said sheepishly. "It's nice to see you again Suguchi san."  
  
"We're not strangers Lily chan," Tohma said regaining his composer. "Although I am your senior."  
  
He thought for a minute before shrugging.  
  
"Tohma san is fine. Just Tohma is even better. But never mind that now, I'll bet your starving."  
  
At the mention of food Lily's stomach started to rumble. The in flight meal seemed ages ago, and the roll it had been served with had been rock hard.  
  
"That sounds pretty good actually Tohma san."  
  
*********************************************  
  
Sunlight streamed into Lily's bedroom window the next morning.  
  
Last night she'd thrown her suitcases in the room Tohma had said was hers from now on and had eaten dinner with him and his wife Mika before going to sleep.  
  
With a loud yawn she sat up and rubbed her eyes. All that jet lag had made her sleep like a log.  
  
Lily looked around for a minute and the large red digits on the alarm clock read 10:30.  
  
That was pretty late for her since she'd lived the past ten years on a cattle farm, but a good sleep in every now and again doesn't go astray.  
  
Lily got dressed and walked towards the kitchen. The entire house was silent since at that very moment she was its only inhabitant. Both Tohma and Mika were at work.  
  
On the kitchen bench there was a bowl and a box of cereal. On the box Tohma had left a note. It read:  
  
Good Morning Lily chan, I hope you slept well. Help yourself to the cereal and anything you want to eat during the day. Make yourself at home today and I'll be home at about five this evening. Tohma. P.S Be sure to check out my CD collection, it's probably the best in Japan.  
  
"Thanks Tohma san," Lily said and poured herself a bowl of cereal.  
  
After breakfast she did as Tohma recommended and had a look at his CD collection. He hadn't been exaggerating either, his collection covered an entire wall in the living room.  
  
Lily grabbed a chair so she could start at the top and make her way down. She couldn't help but notice that one section of the rack was completely empty. The gap was quite large, it was almost like someone missing a tooth.  
  
'Maybe he went off that particular band,' she thought with a shrug.  
  
After another moment or two of browsing, she came across a CD with Bad Luck written on the spine.  
  
"Interesting use of the English language," she said chuckling to herself and pulled the CD out of the rack.  
  
She took one look at the front cover and dropped it like a ton of lead.  
  
"Un-be-lie-va-bl-e," she gasped.  
  
From now on Lily Barton's life was about to get a whole lot more interesting. 


	2. Chapter Two

Hikaru's say: Hello all! Thanks to all of those who reviewed, and sorry for not putting a note in the first chapter. Here's a just a few things that'll be handy to know as you read this fic.  
  
This fic takes place a year after the events of Gravitation.  
  
Since I've seen the subbed version of this and have little to no interest in seeing the dub, I'll be using the titles san, kun, chan and sama in the dialog. I think most of you will know what they all mean, but if you don't, say so in the review and I'll explain in the next chapter.  
  
To those of you who hate original character fics (and with good reason) don't worry, there are only going to be two original characters. I can also see your point since I hate fics where the new original character saves everyone from impending doom, is perfect and loved by everyone or has more issues then a newspaper.  
  
Thanks for the spelling tip on Seguchi, when I was getting the correct spellings off my friend I misheard.  
  
Well, now that that has been said, I'll keep the chapters coming if you keep the reviews coming. Later! **********************************************  
  
"Now are you sure you don't need me to take you there?" Tohma asked for the thousandth time. "You might get lost, being your first day and all."  
  
"I'll be fine," Lily said with a laugh at his concern and put her shoes on at the front door.  
  
She was setting out for school in her new uniform with her bag weighed down with new textbooks.  
  
"Are you sure?" Tohma asked for the last time as he opened the door for her.  
  
"Positive," Lily said with a confident tone. "I guess I'll see you tonight?"  
  
"See you then," Tohma said with a smile and Lily set out.  
  
"Now I take a left here and then turn right at the chemist," she mumbled to herself as she made her way through the streets of Tokyo.  
  
As she walked, she could feel the little hairs on the back of neck prickling. She looked around, but the streets were quiet and she couldn't see anyone lucking in a dark corner.  
  
She walked on and saw a car moving at a slow pace out of the corner out of her eye. She turned her head ever so slightly and could see the Mercedes badge glistening on the black car. The windows were tinted so any hope of seeing the driver was erased.  
  
Lily picked up her pace just a little bit.  
  
The car increased its speed.  
  
By now Lily was regretting her rejection at Tohma's offer. Things were getting just a little creepy. She turned the corner in a hurry and disappeared from the driver's view.  
  
The car drove around the corner in pursuit. Lily was nowhere in sight. The Mercedes halted for a minute before it was beeped at by several cars behind it. It took off and vanished down the street corner.  
  
Lily took a step out of the CD store and looked around. The car had gone and she gave a sigh of relief. Japan was getting stranger by the minute.  
  
*********************************************  
  
"Class, this is Barton Lily, a transfer student from America. Please make her feel welcome," Lily's new teacher said as he and Lily stood at the front of the class.  
  
The class applauded and Lily made a small speech about herself and her interests. She then sat down at the back of the class, right next to a window.  
  
The class set to work on some mathematics and Lily wasn't even through the third question when the door burst open.  
  
"Good morning!" came a high pitched cry. Lily looked up to see a girl about her age standing at the door, one hand held high in a gesture of greeting.  
  
She had two long, black pigtails that were tied up high on the sides of her head and was about two feet taller then everyone else in the class. It was hard to ignore the huge round glasses she was wearing since they covered half her face.  
  
"So nice you could join us this morning Nickson san," the teacher said dryly.  
  
"The star of the show always arrives late," the girl chirped brightly and made her way to her seat.  
  
Lily couldn't help but smile, it was nice to see someone this energetic in a school room.  
  
The day was going smoothly, but just before lunch, things took an interesting turn.  
  
Lily was steaming through her science work when something shone in her left eye. She jerked her head and started to look for whatever had done it.  
  
Her first assumption was that someone had a plastic ruler and was intentionally annoying her, but she realised since she was next to a window on her left, the distraction had to of come from outside.  
  
With a quick glance at the teacher who was still correcting papers, she looked out the window.  
  
Her classroom was on the third floor of the five story school building and had a great view of the gardens and the entrance gate.  
  
Parked outside the gate was a black Mercedes. A feeling of dread filled Lily's stomach as she peered closer, wishing she had a telescope. She could just see, glinting in the sun, was a pair of binoculars.  
  
"Aren't you coming?" someone asked from beside her.  
  
Lily screamed and spun her head around.  
  
"Wow, you're intense with your science," the energetic girl called Nickson said.  
  
"Huh? Oh sorry," Lily said and gave the parked car another quick glance.  
  
"What's so interesting?" Nickson asked and looked out the window. "Oh wow! Cool car! I bet a really hot guy drives it!"  
  
Nickson was now leaning on Lily's head to get a better look at the Mercedes.  
  
Then, rather suddenly, the car sped off down the street and out of the girl's sight.  
  
'What the heck is going on?" Lily thought as her neck held up the other girl's weight.  
  
"Hey are you coming to lunch or what?" Nickson said, interrupting Lily's thoughts for a second time.  
  
"Oh yea, I guess I didn't hear the bell," Lily said sheepishly.  
  
Relief flooded down Lily's spine as Nickson stopped leaning on her head.  
  
"To the cafeteria!" she cried dramatically pointing out the door in a pioneering stance.  
  
She then grabbed Lily's arm and ran out the door, with Lily being dragged behind her.  
  
**********************************************  
  
"Name's Nickson, Joan Nickson. I like my orange sodas in cans not glasses," the energetic girl said as she and Lily stood in the cafeteria line.  
  
"I'm Barton, Lily Barton. I like eating pizzas from boxes not plates," Lily said with a smile. "I'm guessing Nickson isn't a traditional Japanese name?"  
  
"That's right baby! You're looking at five generations of English heritage!" Joan proclaimed and she slammed her tray down on a vacant table. "Why my family was at the Battle of Hastings and I'm a distant of Guy Fawks! You know, the guy who tried to blow up parliament house?"  
  
"Really?" Lily asked awe struck.  
  
"No but it sounds impressive doesn't it?" Joan said with a mouthful of rice. "By the way, do you have a best friend yet?"  
  
"I only arrived in Japan three days ago," Lily pointed out.  
  
"Great! Then I'll be your best friend!" Joan said and hugged Lily tightly.  
  
'What am I in for?' Lily thought as Joan smothered her.  
  
**********************************************  
  
"So how come your family moved to Japan?" Lily asked as the girls walked out of the building after the final bell.  
  
"Well there were several reasons actually," Joan said trying to look thoughtful with her amount of brain capacity. "Dad got offered a really wicked business deal, I won a scholarship, Japan has cutting edge technology and many other cheese-filled reasons."  
  
"Cheese-filled?"  
  
"Yea but the real reason was..."  
  
Lily held her breath in suspense for the conclusion.  
  
"The anime."  
  
Lily fell over backwards in disbelief.  
  
"You mean to tell me that you and your family relocated halfway across the globe just to support your anime addition?"  
  
"Yep. Besides, when you read and speak fluent Japanese, you've only got three options. One-spend your weekends fansubbing black market anime, two- post scandelations on the Internet or move. Which sounds best to you?" Joan asked.  
  
"I see your point," Lily admitted and got up. Fansubbing might make you popular among anime fans, but it also meant sitting in front of a computer for most of your life and swearing at broken equipment.  
  
They continued to chat as they made there way to the gate, then Lily saw it.  
  
The phantom Mercedes was back. Parked across the street with the windows wound up, silent and waiting.  
  
Lily couldn't tell it the driver was in there due to the tinted windows but she wasn't taking any chances.  
  
"Guess I'll see ya tomorrow Lily chan," Joan said.  
  
Lily grabbed her arm and pulled her back with a jolt. Joan's glasses came off from behind one ear and she looked at Lily with her usual clueless look.  
  
"Can I come over to your place?" Lily asked as she squeezed Joan's arm tighter.  
  
"Sure. I can introduce you to the wonderful world of anime and we can have orange Fanta if ya like," she said brightly.  
  
"Cool, let's go,' Lily said eagerly and the two friends departed.  
  
*********************************************  
  
The driver of the Mercedes lowered his binoculars and was about to grab the ignition key when the driver's side door was yanked open.  
  
"Hey what's your." he then saw who was standing on the kerb and screamed.  
  
A tall blond man with green eyes yanked the driver out of the car but the front of his shirt and slammed him against the car.  
  
"What the hell do you think you're doing stealing my car?" the blonde man demanded.  
  
"It's not like that brother I swear!" the driver stammered as his brother gave him a look that could be clearly read by anyone who walked by.  
  
It said: "I'm gonna kill you and leave your corpse to rot in the sun for a week before I bury you in a cornfield where no one will ever find you."  
  
"No one ever touches my car, Tatsuha, ever," the driver's brother hissed dangerously, moving his face closer to Tatsuha's. "Shuichi is lucky if he gets to even sit it."  
  
Tatsuha gave a small feeble whimper. His brother could just make out the words, "I'm sorry."  
  
The man released his grip on his brother causing him to fall to the ground.  
  
"What are you doing here anyway?" the car owner said impatiently as he looked down on Tatsuha. "Even you aren't sick enough to be picking up junior high students."  
  
"I missed my darling older brother."  
  
"Cut the crap."  
  
"I came to see that girl," Tatsuha said honestly as he stood up and tried to straighten his shirt.  
  
"How did you know about her?" his brother asked suspiciously.  
  
"Tohma san told me. So I decided to come and see her for myself. They don't look alike really, just a similar feature here and there," Tatsuha said.  
  
"Are you aware that stalking is illegal?" the older man said, his green eyes giving out a piecing glare.  
  
"Well umm.."  
  
"Oh just shut up and get in the car."  
  
**********************************************  
  
"Well here we are," Joan said cheerfully, holding her friend's hand.  
  
"You live here?" Lily said, completely awe struck.  
  
"Not too shabby eh?" Joan said and pressed the intercom.  
  
They were standing in front of what could only be described as a mansion. The front porch was held up by two stone columns, the garden had been designed by a group of specialists and every inch of the mansion glistened in the sunlight.  
  
"H-how many rooms do you have in your house?" Lily asked, not averting your eyes from Joan's home.  
  
"Only about fifty," Joan said in a modest tone.  
  
"Fifty?" Lily squeaked in disbelief.  
  
The huge iron gates then swung open as someone from inside hit the button to operate them and Joan wandered in casually.  
  
"Come on Lily chan, we've got ninety two episodes of Rurouni Kenshin to watch, times a wasting."  
  
**********************************************  
  
Tohma straightened some papers on his desk when his phone started to ring.  
  
"Seguchi Tohma," he said in a professional tone.  
  
He was silent for a few seconds before he spoke again.  
  
"I thought you'd call," he said with a smile. "I take it you're curious to see how your daughter is doing?"  
  
**********************************************  
  
"If you'd have wanted to have played at your friend's you should have asked Tohma or myself this morning," Mika said as Lily and herself shared a cup of tea that evening.  
  
"Well something unexpected happened," Lily said, trying to defend herself.  
  
"Such as?" Mika asked as she put some of her long hair behind her ear.  
  
"I was stalked all day by some nutcase in a Mercedes," Lily said and sipped her tea.  
  
Mika went off her rocker. She leapt up and started screaming about this and that so fast that Lily couldn't keep up. Not that she would have been able to if Mika had been speaking English anyway.  
  
The only few words that Lily could make out were; police, danger, help and for some odd reason, yogurt.  
  
"Yogurt?" Lily asked with a frown.  
  
"What?" Mika asked as she stopped dead in her ramble.  
  
"Oh sorry, I think I might have mistranslated that one."  
  
Mika left the room and came back a few seconds later, carrying what looked mike an ATM card.  
  
"Tohma had this made for you but I didn't think you needed it," she said handing Lily the card.  
  
"What is it?" Lily asked mimicking Joan's regular expression-completely clueless. "It's a security card for the NG Company building," Mika said as she sat back down. "From now on it's best that you go there straight after school to meet Tohma."  
  
"Don't you think this is a bit much Mika san?" Lily asked as she looked at the card in her hand.  
  
"Don't bother arguing Lily chan," she replied, raising her tea cup.  
  
Lily took her advice and finished her tea before going to bed.  
  
She didn't fancy the idea of sitting outside Tohma's office writing essays every weekday afternoon, but she didn't have much choice really. When Mika put her foot down, she really put her foot down!  
  
Lily flicked of her lamp and closed her eyes. In no more then three seconds the globe lit up again and Lily jumped out of bed.  
  
Without turning on any of the other lights in the house, Lily crept into the lounge room and switched on a small lamp.  
  
It glowed red and huge globs floated up and down.  
  
'I can't believe a man as cool as Tohma owns a lava lamp,' she thought it disgust. 'This is a pretty bad way to relive the seventies.'  
  
She then started to calculate how old Tohma would have been in the seventies, but gave up halfway out of lack of concern.  
  
Lily quickly grabbed the Bad Luck CD and headed back to her room, turning off the horrible lamp on the way.  
  
She sat down on her bed and slipped the cover out of the plastic case.  
  
At the bottom of the legal mumbo jumbo and trademarks, the Lily could see the NG company logo.  
  
'All right then,' Lily thought to herself. 'When I go there tomorrow after school I'll find Shuichi and tell him the truth about my Dad.' 


	3. Chapter Three

Hikaru's say: Thankyou so much to everyone who reviewed! *hugs reviewers* So anyway, those of you who pointed out that Yuki had golden eyes are correct. I was typing the chapter after work when I was completely mentally and physically exhausted, so please don't banish me to a corner where I have to sit on a stool wearing a white cone on my head with idiot written on it.  
  
Now just one more important note before you guys read the chapter. How do you spell the name of the evil guy from ASK? I've seen it spelt as Taichi, Tachi and even Taki. Could someone drop a hint? Thanks a lot and the sooner I find out, the sooner the chapter comes.  
  
**********************************************  
  
"And people say the subway in New York is bad!" Lily yelled to herself in English as she jumped off the bus.  
  
She had just spent the last forty minutes on a bus crammed with servants of the devil that had cleverly disguised themselves as high school students. There had been enough passengers to fill two buses and several kids were making a general nuisance of themselves.  
  
There had been a kid spiting out the window, kids thinking that if the smoked up the back no one would notice them and one guy had nearly set Lily's hair on fire when he'd been running around with his cigarette lighter.  
  
Lily walked down the street, breathing heavily as she tried to recover from the bus trauma. From now on she'd wait the extra fifteen minutes and catch the later bus.  
  
She'd been worried at first that she wouldn't be able to find the NG building, but upon reaching it she felt really stupid. To have missed it you'd have to be blind in one eye and have a cataract over the over. This building put Joan's so called 'house' to shame.  
  
Lily walked up to front glass doors and swiped her card through the little machine next to it. The blinking light above the door flicked from red to green and the glass doors slid open with a small humming noise.  
  
'Cool,' Lily thought and headed for the elevator. She pressed button 14 and headed up. The elevator gave a chime as it reached its destination and the doors rolled open.  
  
She had no idea where Tohma's office was so she decided to just walk around until she found it.  
  
*********************************************  
  
Shuichi punched in the code for the strawberry pockey on the vending machine and pressed his nose up to the glass. Ever so slowly the little box moved forward before it stopped.  
  
"Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!" Shuichi wailed and thumped the glass on the machine. "This is too cruel!"  
  
He grabbed the machine with both hands and started to shake it furiously. He stopped when he saw a hand appear next to him and placed some coins in the machine.  
  
There was a collection of beeps from the code pad before the strawberry pockey rack started to move again. Two boxes fell and Shuichi let go of the machine.  
  
"Lily san!" he said in surprise as he saw her fishing the boxes out of the machine.  
  
"Good afternoon Shindo san," she said with a smile, handing him a box of pockey before stuffing the other box in her school bag along with her wallet.  
  
"What are you doing here?" he asked, holding onto his pockey as he looked at her with amazement. He'd hadn't really expected to see her again so soon. Maybe even never.  
  
"My dad's friend works here," she said.  
  
At the mention at her father, Shuichi recalled the incident in the recording studio after his return to Japan.  
  
"None of you are to say anything to Lily chan about her father," K said with a frown as he waved his Cougar Magnum around in a threatening manner at the three young rock stars and their producer. "Understand?"  
  
No one had lodged a complaint after that persuasive speech.  
  
"Hey Shindo san," Lily said waving her hand in front of Shuichi's face. "Are you in there?"  
  
"Huh?" Shuichi asked with a blank look on his face.  
  
Lily smiled at the young rock star. He could be just like Joan at times.  
  
"Do you feel like taking a walk?" she asked.  
  
*********************************************  
  
The crisp Autumn wind blew some orange and yellow leaves around as the two walked through the park. Shuichi was now wearing his baseball cap and sunglasses to disguise himself.  
  
"It'll be getting cold soon," he said brightly as Lily walked next to him, "and no one will want to buy ice cream anymore. I'll have to buy more pockey to make up for the loss. I guess the weather will be strange for you since the weather in America is different at this time of year."  
  
Lily didn't answer him and just kept her eyes focus on the path ahead of her.  
  
"Anyway, I hope K san doesn't notice I've been missing for long, but I'm sure....  
  
"I lied to you the other day."  
  
Shuichi stopped mid-sentence as Lily cut him off.  
  
"Eh? What do you mean Lily san? Are you an illegal immigrant or something?"  
  
Lily couldn't help but laugh, just being around Shuichi put her in a good mood.  
  
"No, no nothing like that," she said and walked over to a park bench. "I lied to you about my Dad."  
  
Shuichi sat down on the bench while trying to hide a worried look. He had the feeling that Lily was going to tell him something he already knew. The hard part was to fool her into believing that he was completely ignorant. If he let even the tiniest thing slip, he would be eating K's lead.  
  
"I told you that he was an American," Lily said slowly as she watched the beautiful park scenery in front of her. "That was a lie, he's Japanese."  
  
"Why would you lie about something like that?" Shuichi asked, tilting his head to one side. "It's no big deal where he or you come from."  
  
"It's a long and complicated explanation," Lily said, her posture sagging as she sighed, "but it's mostly got to do with my grandmother."  
  
Shuichi didn't say anything and Lily continued speaking.  
  
"Unlike most other people, I don't take my father's name. Barton was my mother's name."  
  
"How come?" Shuichi asked.  
  
"Because my parents never married, they had a de facto relationship. That was the thing Grams had a problem with you see," Lily explained.  
  
Shuichi swallowed uncomfortably. 'Lily san is an illegitimate child,' he thought. 'I asked a bad question.'  
  
"After Mum died," Lily said quietly, "Dad left America and returned to Japan for work. I had to stay with my Grandmother on her farm. She was nice but was really strict about mentioning my father. She always told me that I could never mention his name, his nationality or what he did for a living. If I told anyone it could make trouble for us."  
  
Shuichi was getting more uncomfortable by the minute. The secret he was holding was like a balloon inside his chest that getting bigger and bigger by the minute. He knew why she couldn't reveal any of that information.  
  
Lily suddenly gave a small hollow laugh.  
  
"And do you want to know what the funny part is?" she asked Shuichi, her gaze shooting past his sunglasses into his baby blue eyes. "I know hardly anything about him. I don't what his job is, why he never came back to visit or even what he has for breakfast. My own father is a complete stranger to me."  
  
She then broke the gaze and looked down at the cement beneath her school shoes.  
  
The cool breeze caused some golden leaves to dance in front of them for a minute before they blew down the path in the uncomfortable silence that followed.  
  
"Lily san," Shuichi said slowly, wondering if what he was about to say was such a good idea.  
  
Lily lifted her head and looked at him. He couldn't help but notice the sad look that resided in her eyes.  
  
"Do you..do you want to see your father?" he asked slowly in a soft tone.  
  
She looked Shuichi dead in the eye. "For nine years I haven't seen him or heard his voice on the phone. I can barely recall his face and any memory of him is hazy."  
  
She paused before she spoke again.  
  
"But still, I want to see him. He is my dad after all."  
  
Shuichi didn't know what to do or say. He didn't do well in these kinds of situations and he was always the one that needed comfort from either Hiro or Yuki.  
  
Slowly he reached over and put a comforting hand on Lily's back.  
  
"I'm sure that you'll see him soon," Shuichi said with an encouraging smile. "He's not the sort of person who would disappear from your life forever."  
  
"Huh? How do you know that?" Lily asked with a surprised look.  
  
'Oh f@*% I've stuffed up big time,' Shuichi groaned mentally as a panicked look covered his face.  
  
Something cold and small connected with the back of his head. He realised what it was and it robbed him of his speech, making him unable to cover up his mistake.  
  
Lily was slowly moving to the other end of the bench in horror as she looked at the person behind Shuichi.  
  
"You have ten seconds to get back to the recording studio, Mr Rock Star," K said in a cold voice. "Ten, Nine.."  
  
Shuichi screamed and jumped up off the bench. He ran back towards the NG building in such a hurry that his feet set some fallen leaves on fire.  
  
K finished his countdown and started to fire shots randomly in Shuichi's general direction. He then lowered his gun and smiled at Lily's cowering figure under the park bench.  
  
"Hey Lily chan," he said after his shooting fix, "would you like to come watch Bad Luck's recording while you wait for Tohma san? He won't be finished for a while yet."  
  
Lily crawled out from underneath the park bench and stood up.  
  
"Is it safe?" she asked weakly.  
  
"Don't worry," he said confidently and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. "You'll be with me the entire time."  
  
Lily didn't even have time to yell for help before K dragged her away.  
  
**********************************************  
  
"Hooray! The park!" Ryuichi squealed as he ran towards the play equipment, Kumagoro in hand.  
  
"I just love to play! Don't you Kumagoro?" Ryuichi said as he slid down the slide, the pink bunny sitting in his lap.  
  
A father who was supervising his child on the swings caught sight of the thirty one year old jumping from one piece of play equipment to another and frowned.  
  
"Excuse me," he said awkwardly as Ryuichi ran past him for the fith time in 3 seconds.  
  
"Eh?" Ryuichi said stopping and looked at the man with a childish look, Kumagoro hanging off his head.  
  
"Haven't I seen you some place before?" the man asked.  
  
"No you've never seen me before in your entire life," the rock star said happily and ran off again.  
  
The parent went back to watching his child play on the swings as he heard a chorus of made up words being sung out again and again behind him.  
  
Ryuichi placed Kumagoro on one end of the seesaw and sat on the other end. The stuffed toy went up into the air and that's where he stayed.  
  
"Aww this is no fun," Ryuichi said with a pout and crossed his arms over his chest.  
  
"Enjoying yourself Ryu chan?" someone asked behind him.  
  
Ryuichi's brown head turned around and he gave a huge grin.  
  
"Noriko!" he cried happily and hugged the purple haired woman.  
  
"There, there Ryu chan," Noriko said easing out of her friend's grip. "We're meant to go see Tohma now remember?"  
  
"Oh yea!" he said laughing and scratched the back of his head. "Me and Kumagoro were having so much fun that we forgot. Right Kumagoro?"  
  
Both adults took his silence as a yes.  
  
"Come on Ryuichi," Noriko said taking his arm and the two (or three if you counted Kumagoro) headed off through the park.  
  
"Are you going to go see Shuichi kun sing at his concert next week?" Noriko asked happily, even though she already knew the answer.  
  
"Yes yes!" Ryuichi sang. "I just love to hear Shu chan and the others play! They make me and Kumagoro happy."  
  
The two adults saw a blur go past at the end of the path and they stopped walking.  
  
"What was that?" Noriko asked, holding the singer by the arm more tightly so he wouldn't run off.  
  
"That scream sounded like Shu chan. Didn't it Kumagoro?"  
  
A collection of gunshots rang out before there was silence once more.  
  
"I think you're right, because that was most definitely K san," Noriko said with a smile.  
  
"Let's go see K san Kumagoro!" Ryuichi cried happily and tried to get his arm out of Noriko's grip.  
  
As Noriko held him back, she saw K appear and walk in the same direction a Shuichi had moments before. He was waving his gun around casually and had one arm around a young girl as he talked. The brown haired girl looked as if she wanted to be anywhere else but there.  
  
Ryuichi stopped completely. Kumagoro fell from his grip and landed on some scattered leaves. Noriko could feel his entire body trembling as she held his arm.  
  
"Ryuichi?" she asked in a worried tone. She had never seen Ryuichi act like this.  
  
He turned around to face her slowly. The childish innocence that had once glistened in his eyes was now gone. He grabbed Noriko by the shoulders and squeezed tightly.  
  
"Did you see? Did you see?" he gasped softly.  
  
Noriko broke out of Ryuichi's grip and took a step back. His current state was beyond strange and very scary.  
  
"Did I see what Ryuichi?" she asked seriously. "What's wrong?"  
  
"Lily. That girl with K san was Lily chan. My Lily chan." 


	4. Chapter Four

Hikaru's say: Thanks to everyone for the beautiful reviews, and a special thanks to HakuKumo for the link to the fab site that helped me with my spelling problem.  
  
Sorry for taking so long with this chapter, but I had three cooking evaluations and a ton of Math work to get done before Friday. Somehow I don't think my teachers would have understood that I didn't do my homework because of my commitments to the fanfiction world and my loyal fans.  
  
So I'll try to get chapters out faster and try to make them more interesting. Thanks everyone and please leave a review.  
  
PS: If you guys give me the names of your fics I'll be more then happy to read them. Ja! ^_^v  
  
**********************************************  
  
Tohma trudged into the kitchen early the next morning in his dressing gown. He was on his way to have his regular 7:30 pick- me- up before he would think about getting ready for the day.  
  
He pushed open the door and ran his hand through his light hair that resembled a drunken porcupine. He was quite surprised to see Lily standing at the stove dressed in her uniform.  
  
She flipped something over in the pan before she looked up at Tohma.  
  
"Good morning!" she chirped and handed Tohma a hot cup of coffee that she had just made him.  
  
Tohma gulped down half the mug before his expression changed from "I'm a tired old man, leave me alone" to "I'm the nicest person in the world-give me a hug!"  
  
"Good morning!" he replied in the same tone.  
  
Lily rolled her eyes and wondered why people didn't get up at the crack of dawn like she did. You wasted half the day sleeping in her opinion.  
  
She removed the pancake from the hot pan and flipped it onto a plate before drowning it in maple syrup and butter.  
  
"Here you go!" she said brightly and handed the plate to Tohma. "Breakfast American style."  
  
Lily grabbed the second plate of pancakes for herself and sat down at the table with Tohma.  
  
"Glad it's Poets Day?" she asked brightly as she sipped her hot chocolate.  
  
"What Day?"  
  
"Friday," Lily said quickly. She didn't think it would be wise to explain that joke.  
  
"Yea I guess, every day's the same for me really. It's what happens when you get old," Tohma said and he ate his pancakes.  
  
"You're not old Tohma san," Lily scoffed, "you're only thirty three."  
  
"I just look it," Tohma said with a sigh and Lily rolled her eyes.  
  
The two didn't speak for a while as they ate their calorie packed breakfast but something was bothering Tohma in the back of his head. Just a little thing that poked and nagged and wouldn't go away no matter how hard he tried to ignore it.  
  
"Lily chan," he said finally, giving in to the persistent nagging.  
  
"Hmm?" Lily looked up with half a pancake hanging out of her mouth, syrup dripping onto the plate.  
  
"When was the last time you heard from your Dad?"  
  
"Oh gosh, that's going back a while," Lily said as she swallowed her pancake. "I haven't spoken to him since kindergarten. I hope he's not working too hard. I guess he was so busy working that he didn't have time to call me. He always sent packages and allowance money every month or so though. I suppose that you don't see him that much either do you Tohma san?"  
  
Tohma jerked back uncomfortably. "Well actually.."  
  
"DING DONG!"  
  
He was saved by the bell-literally. Someone was at the front door.  
  
"I've got it," Lily said and ran to the door in her socks.  
  
Tohma heaved a sigh of relief and could just hear a murmur of voices at the door before it closed.  
  
"What is it Lily chan?" he called and collected the empty plates.  
  
"A package from Grams," Lily said as she came back into the room, wrestling with the package strings.  
  
"Oh yea? What is it?" Tohma asked as he rinsed the plates in the sink and wondered what he was going to wear to work.  
  
He was someone who didn't believe in wearing the same thing twice.  
  
"Something I can't believe I forgot!" yelled Lily with joy and there was a gust of wind behind Tohma as Lily got her bag out of her room and headed for the door.  
  
**********************************************  
  
The Fireblazer 2000s glided down the streets of Tokyo with maximum speed and grace. They were the best rollerblades on the market and their owner was more then thrilled to have them back.  
  
Lily had been so wound up with last minute packing before she left home that she'd forgotten to pack the red and white rollerblades.  
  
Lily couldn't run a race, jump a hurdle or score a point when it came to PE, but she could skate like a pro. Strange isn't it?  
  
She swiped her card through the scanner and cruised into the NG building, weaving in and out of managers, pop idols, reporters and producers.  
  
Deciding to refresh her memory on some of her older, more difficult skills, she started to skate backwards, making a cross motion with her feet.  
  
Lily had decided not to join any after school clubs for a whole variety of reasons. She sucked at any form of PE, so sports clubs were out. Her chess skills were a lost cause and she didn't watch enough anime to join Joan's anime club. So she decided to just hang around the NG building to fill in time and do her homework.  
  
Thump!  
  
Lily hit something solid and fell on her rear with a suitable amount of force. A collection of small objects hit her on the head, one after the other.  
  
"Oww," she groaned and thanked her luck stars that she was wearing her helmet.  
  
"Sorry about that, I wasn't looking! Eh? Is that you Lily chan?" someone said above her.  
  
Lily looked up and blushed. She'd bumped into Nakano Hiroshi, the guitarist for Bad Luck.  
  
"No, no!" she stammered quickly. "It, it was my fault, really it was! I wasn't paying attention! I'm so sorry!"  
  
"It's all right," Hiro said with a smile and pulled her up onto her feet.  
  
Lily went an even deeper shade of crimson as Hiro held her hand. Since she was having a hard time looking him in the eye, Lily looked down at the floor and saw that the falling objects had been a collection of drink cans that were now rolling away.  
  
She bent down and picked up the runaway drinks while Hiro put some coins in the can machine. She held the cans close to her chest and stood up.  
  
Hiro took them from her and handed her the new can.  
  
"Here," he said thrusting it in her hand, "I got you one too."  
  
"You shouldn't have! I mean..thank you.I mean.um.how much do I owe you?" Lily was now speaking fluent idiot.  
  
"My treat," Hiro said with a smile.  
  
Lily practically melted.  
  
"What's the hold up Hiro?" Shuichi asked as he came around the corner. His blue eyes then landed on the tomato coloured Lily.  
  
"Lily chan!!" he screamed and with an energetic bound wrapped her in a bear hug.  
  
Lily had to lean back on her blades to stop herself from falling and gasped in surprise. The only other person who ever hugged her was Joan, so this amount of affection was just a little strange to her.  
  
"Stop it Shuichi," Hiro said with a frown at his best friend. "You're freaking the poor kid out."  
  
"It's fine Nakano san, really," Lily assured him and hugged Shuichi back a little awkwardly. "He just surprised me, that's all."  
  
"Well, still, you shouldn't just jump out of nowhere and hug young girls Shuichi. The police will take you away," Hiro said with a snicker.  
  
Shuichi poked his tongue out and Lily hugged him a bit tighter out of sympathy.  
  
"You shouldn't get to close Lily chan," Hiro said with a shifty look at the hugging pair, "you're likely to catch a serious case of the Stupids."  
  
"I don't think so. I quite like Shindo san actually."  
  
"YOU LIKE ME?" Shuichi yelled in disbelief. His eyes went all starry and his body went limp in Lily's grip.  
  
Hiro shook his head in disgust. "Getting all weak over a junior high student. You're sicker than I thought."  
  
Shuichi regained his composer and broke off the hug. "It's the first time a girl has ever said she liked me," he said sounding embarrassed.  
  
"Moron," Hiro said with a sigh. "By the way Lily chan, what were your plans for this afternoon?"  
  
"Revise for a Kanji test and wait for Tohma I guess," Lily said with a shrug.  
  
"Why don't you come to the recording room with us?" Hiro suggested. "I'm sure someone can help you with your Kanji during a break."  
  
"I'd really hate to be a burden and get in your way."  
  
"Nonsense!" Shuichi cried happily thumping her on the back, causing her to stagger on her blades. "You're good company Lily chan. Besides, a young lady like you needs to be careful, there are perverts around."  
  
With that winning argument Shuichi placed his hands on Lily's back and started to wheel her down the hall with Hiro trailing.  
  
It wasn't until they had left that the air vent in the roof gave a loud groan and burst open. Something fell to the ground with a scream and a thud.  
  
"Idiot Kumagoro! You've gotten fat and made us fall!" Ryuichi snapped angrily and crawled out of the dust cloud he'd just created.  
  
He stood up and dusted himself off, not feeling the least bit embarrassed. "Silly Kumagoro," he muttered and brushed the dirt off the pink bunny.  
  
Ryuichi gave a satisfied sigh when he and his companion were clean again and smiled.  
  
"Lily chan is just as sweet as I remember," he said to his companion and walked off in the opposite direction to Shuichi.  
  
Noriko would be angry if he was late. He didn't like it when Noriko was angry.  
  
**********************************************  
  
"Great work everyone!" K cried happily, beaming as he waved a magazine around in his hand. The team had just finished and the famous cougar magnum had stayed safely in its holster for the entire day.  
  
"Um, K san," Fujisaki said slowly.  
  
"What?"  
  
"What happened to your hair?"  
  
K's regular blonde ponytail was done up in a beautiful braid with a big blue bow tried on the end.  
  
"That was me," Lily admitted with an embarrassed smile. "I attacked his hair after I finished with the Kanji revision."  
  
"Let me check over your notes!" Shuichi said happily and snatched the notepad out of her hands before Lily could refuse.  
  
"What's that picture of a fork doing there?" Hiro asked as he looked at the notes over his friend's shoulder.  
  
"It's meant to say mountain!" Lily wailed in despair.  
  
"Of course it does," Shuichi said slowly and handed the notepad back to her.  
  
"K san! You're meant to tell them about the new album listing," Sakano in annoyance.  
  
"Don't rush me," K said in a warning tone and gave the producer a dark glare.  
  
Sakano took a cautious step back.  
  
The blond American unrolled the music magazine in his hand and flicked through the pages until he found what he was looking for. He gave a smug grin and turned the magazine to face the three young rock stars.  
  
"You're kidding me!" Shuichi said in awe as their eyes grew to the size of fish bowls. "The album is already at the number two spot?"  
  
"Way to go!" Lily said with a grin.  
  
"Nittle Grasper's new album is still top of the charts though," Fujisaki pointed out thoughtfully.  
  
"That's true. Those guys sure are hard to compete against. Not that I'm surprised really, they were Japan's most successful group for years," Hiro added.  
  
"What's a 'Nittle Grasper'?" Lily asked with a frown. Those two words didn't translate to anything she could remember studying.  
  
K gave Fujisaki a death glare and the teenager was suddenly wishing that he was wearing bullet proof clothes.  
  
"Oh just this band. Nothing to worry about Lily chan," Shuichi said quickly and patted her a few times on the head.  
  
"Are you sure? Because for some reason I."  
  
"It's nothing!" Shuichi said firmly. Perhaps a little too firm because Lily broke eye contact with the singer and started examining her school shoes closely.  
  
Hiro bopped Shuichi on the head with his fist and took charge of the situation.  
  
"Don't take it personally Lily chan," he said comfortingly. "Shuichi just gets a bit worked up when someone mentions Nittle Grasper."  
  
"Thanks you jerk, make me the bad guy," Shuichi grumbled as he rubbed his head.  
  
"It's ok," Lily said quickly, trying to make it sound that it hadn't bothered her. "It's not my business anyway. You guys shouldn't worry about me and work."  
  
"Specking of work," Sakano said emphasizing the last word of his sentence to get everyone back on track, "is everything set for tomorrow's concert?"  
  
Shuichi started to zone out to what the others were saying about equipment and rehearsal and stages when his eyes wondered back to the magazine K was holding.  
  
It gave him a good feeling when he saw that the music he loved with all his heart was so popular. To him singing was everything and without it he would be an empty husk.  
  
On the next page he saw an advertisement for a music channel.  
  
"Nittle Grasper" it read. "We'll take you back to where it all started."  
  
"Well I hope it goes well," Lily's feminine voice stuck out from the others and caught Shuichi's attention. "As for me I'll probably spent all morning watching the music channels before visiting Joan."  
  
Shuichi's eyes went wide and his throat dried up. He started to poke at the magazine fretfully, almost fast enough to make holes in it.  
  
"What's wrong?" K asked as the others continued to talk.  
  
Shuichi poked the magazine harder and tried to speak without success.  
  
K frowned and flipped it around to face him. The blood drained from his face and he quickly threw the magazine over his shoulder.  
  
It hit Sakano in the face but K didn't care. He quickly put a smile on his face and grabbed Lily's shoulders.  
  
Lily looked at K as if he was crazy (which might have been pretty accurate).  
  
"How about, instead of wasting your day, you come to the rehearsal and concert tomorrow?" K suggested with a wide grin.  
  
"Eh? K san you can't."  
  
K took out his gun and threw it a Sakano, hitting him right in the nose. This method proved to be effective because Sakano didn't continue with his sentence.  
  
"Actually I think.." Lily started.  
  
"Great! We'll pick you up at nine tomorrow!" K said without waiting for an answer and Shuichi breathed a sigh of relief.  
  
Now there was no way Lily was going to be near a TV for the entire day.  
  
"Now best be off!" K said turning Lily around and wheeling her towards the door. "Tohma san will be waiting! See ya!"  
  
With that last statement K slammed the door and Lily was left alone with her Kanji notes.  
  
"What kind of a business is Tohma running here?" she wondered aloud before skating off down the hall. 


	5. Chapter Five

Hikaru's say: Ok, ok, I'm fully aware that I haven't uploaded in nearly a decade but I do have legitimate reasons (Hikaru has to dodge rotten food). I have had a whole heap of end of term work to do (who would have thought it would be this hard to research the Italian water polo team? ) and I'm in the middle of moving house. Another thing is that one of the so called sacrifices we have to make is getting rid of my computer and as of the 11th my internet will be cut off. Why can't things ever go my way? Oh well, I'm not giving up on this fic and I'll check out some internet cafés. So enjoy the chapter and don't forget to review!  
  
Shuichi finished singing and the arena was plunged into silence. A small tapping sound came from below the stage as Lily clapped her hands fiercely.  
  
"Woo Hoo! Go Bad Luck! You rock!" she yelled as loud as she could up at the stage.  
  
"Thank you Lily chan," Shuichi said into the microphone. "That's more praise then we get some days."  
  
"Hey you get paid to perform, not to sob over your relationship problems," Fujisaki said with a knowledgeable look. As the performance grew nearer, his stress levels got higher.  
  
Shuichi frowned and Hiro's posture sagged significantly. This was just great, two band members causing tension before a performance. Just what he needed.  
  
"I wish something would interrupt this awkward scene," he grumbled.  
  
The door at the back of the concert arena swung open with such force that it came off its hinges and flew through the air for a few moments before it crashed on the ground.  
  
"This will do nicely."  
  
Everyone looked up and something ran in so fast that no one could make out what it was.  
  
"Lily chan!" it wailed in a high pitched voice. "I have stuffed up utterly! Help!"  
  
Lily was knocked clear out of her seat and landed on the floor with a considerably loud thump.  
  
The band members and their two superiors exchanged confused looks between each other for a few minutes before they hopped off the stage to investigate.  
  
They made their way through the empty rows of seats before they found Lily sitting on the floor, comforting a tall girl with black pigtails who was crying loudly.  
  
"Ok Joan chan, just what's the matter?" Lily asked awkwardly as Joan continued to make an embarrassing scene.  
  
"I don't know how to do my math homework!" she sobbed and Lily's T-shirt started to soak up her tears.  
  
"All right where is it?" Lily said soothingly and Joan took a bundle of papers out of her backpack.  
  
"What don't you understand?"  
  
"All of it!"  
  
"Didn't the teacher explain it well?"  
  
"Yea but I was trying to hack into the school database on my laptop at the time!"  
  
"What were you doing that for?" Lily said pushing Joan away with a frown.  
  
"I don't know," Joan said slowly as the tears stopped. She frowned with thought as she tried to remember.  
  
"Were we ever like this?" Shuichi asked Hiro as he watched the bizzare scene with an awkward expression.  
  
"No," Hiro said bluntly.  
  
Shuichi sighed with relief and wiped some sweat from his brow.  
  
"You were worse."  
  
"Hey!"  
  
K fired off a few rounds to get some form of order.  
  
"Get back to work!" he said with a frown and the musicians were shepherded back on stage at gun point.  
  
It wasn't long before a song was once more flowing through the air, relaxing everyone and turning the situation back to a somewhat normal level.  
  
What's making you tremble? Hedonists are the ones who smile. Lying along these frozen rails is a future that's been planned without telling us. Eccentricity is an obstacle; passion is absorbing. Quite a nightmare, isn't it? Boredom's fighting back. Spicy Marmalade Now that it's exploded into being, seize hold of this evening's chance. Vanish into the night These days, people really seem to be lead astray, with faces hidden by sadness. Beneath the stage of the pale moon, the sobbing villain screams aloud. In the sweet contents of the bottle, the fatal reality is a misunderstanding. Mischievously acting like you want it, join the fad yourself. Quite a problem, isn't it? Vainly not even noticing... Spicy Marmalade In your own way, throw off the chains if they've rusted. Vanish into the night Even tonight, so intently gazed upon, becomes a phantom with the touch of a fingertip. Spicy Marmalade Now that it's exploded into being, seize hold of this evening's chance. Vanish into the night Conspicuous marmalade If you've decided you're ready, well, then... Spicy Marmalade In your own way, throw off the chains if they've rusted. Vanish into the night These days, people really seem to be lead astray, with faces hidden by sadness.   
  
"I reckon it's time for lunch," Hiro said taking his guitar off. "What do you guts think?"  
  
"Great! I made you guys a huge meal last night!" Shuichi said with a crazed grin holding up a huge pot.  
  
Everyone except for K, Shuichi and the two teenagers went blue in the face.  
  
They could feel their stomachs doing summersaults just from looking at the gruesome soup that strangely resembled cement mixture.  
  
"Lily chan!!!" Shuichi yelled across the empty building. "Do you and your friend want some lunch?"  
  
"No thank you Shindo san!" Lily called back. "Joan brought me pizza leftovers from the other night!"  
  
"Ok!!!" Shuichi yelled and turned back to the others. "Come on now, who wants the first serving?"  
  
"Now next time, try paying some attention," Lily said with a grim look as she handed Joan's now completed homework to her.  
  
She hated the idea of doing her homework on weekends, let alone doing someone else's for them.  
  
"You're the coolest Lily chan!" Joan cried smothering her friend, "and just for your trouble you can have my pocket money."  
  
Lily stared down at the huge mound of 10,000 Yen bills that Joan had jammed in her hand.  
  
"What is this?" Lily gasped a complete disbelief. "Annual? Half annual?"  
  
Joan looked up from her math work with a pocky stink hanging out of her mouth.  
  
"Huh? Oh that's weekly," she said with a shrug and went back to the sums that had been completed in Lily's scratchy writing.  
  
Lily attempted to speak a few times but nothing came out. She took a deep breath a tried again, the fortune getting all sweaty in her palm.  
  
"What does your Dad do for a living again?" she said weakly.  
  
"He's a pet turtle."  
  
"Come again?"  
  
"He's a pet turtle."  
  
"What are you talking about?"  
  
"I said he's a pet turtle," Joan nearly yelled. "Aren't you listening or what?"  
  
Lily let out a loud sigh before she did a communication swap.  
  
"It's really nice that you're speaking to me in Japanese so no one here feels excluded, but maybe you should tell me in English," she said in English with her American accent running thick.  
  
"He's the English ambassador," Joan said in a voice that clearly said 'can you tell I'm from Britain or what?'  
  
"Oh ok."  
  
"What was I saying before?" Joan asked looking worried.  
  
"Um, never mind," Lily said deciding not to embarrass Joan any further. "By the way, why did the pizza you gave me have marshmallow on it?"  
  
"That wasn't marshmallow," Joan said with a shrug and grabbed her laptop out of her bag.  
  
"Then what was it?" Lily asked, fearing the answer.  
  
"Probably lint from the bottom of my bag."  
  
"Oh dear Lord," Lily groaned. She regretted asking that as much as she regretted asking what jelly crystals were made from.  
  
"La Li Ho!" someone yelled from behind her.  
  
Both she and Joan screamed and jumped out of their seats. Lily spun around on her skates to see Shuichi standing behind her.  
  
"Oh it's you Shindo san," Lily said with her hand placed over her heart. "You startled us."  
  
"Speak for yourself!" Joan wheezed and readjusted her glasses. "He scared the crap out of me!"  
  
Joan finished tinkering with her glasses and looked up at Shuichi. She moved her laptop onto the seat next to her and walked up to him, placing her face extremely close to his.  
  
"You're really cute!" the Brit said beaming. "Are you in middle school?"  
  
"What!?" Shuichi cried and leant back. "I'm twenty years old!"  
  
"I don't mind the older man," Joan said and Lily wished the ground would just open up and swallow her whole.  
  
"I think Yuki san would have something to say about that," Hiro said as he joined them, taking great delight in watching Shuichi's awkward state.  
  
"Is Yuki your girlfriend?" Joan asked looking crestfallen.  
  
"Well not exactly, Yuki's my lover," Shuichi said slowly. He hoped the girls wouldn't be too freaked out if he came out with the truth.  
  
"Girlfriend, lover, what's the difference?" Joan proclaimed waving her hand around.  
  
"Yuki's a guy."  
  
"Eh?" Everyone turned to see Lily wearing an amused smile at Joan's dismay.  
  
"Well there goes my crush," Joan grumbled and picked up her laptop.  
  
"How'd you know?" Shuichi asked gawking at the brown haired teenager.  
  
"I didn't really, I was just guessing. Not many guys would refer to their girlfriends as lovers," Lily said logically with a shrug. "I'm just really glad I was right. It would have been a pretty ugly scene if I was wrong."  
  
"You're taking this rather well," Hiro said.  
  
"What does that mean exactly?!" Shuichi yelled at him, deafening him in one ear.  
  
"This is the year 2003 Nakano san," Lily said with a shrug. "Us teenagers are well adjusted to everything from same sex relationships to the freaks singing on MTV."  
  
"So you don't mind the fact I listen to David Bowie?" Joan asked hopefully.  
  
"You make me sick," Lily said with a shudder and rolled away from Joan a bit.  
  
"But anyway, sometimes you just need to look at thing differently."  
  
Shuichi was trying his best to understand the two teenagers before him but wasn't getting very far. Hiro gave him a nudge in the ribs and Shuichi came back to the present.  
  
"Oh yea, these are for you guys," he said holding out two VIP tickets.  
  
"I thought the concert was sold out!" Joan said as she held her ticket carefully, afraid that it might disappear from her hands. "How did you guys get these?"  
  
"We're the performers," Hiro said with a smug, superior look. "We can do whatever we want......when K lets us."  
  
"All right then!" Joan said with adrenaline pumping at full speed throughout her entire body. "I'll see you guys at eight o' clock on the dot. This concert is gonna be bigger then The Matrix! Right Lily chan?"  
  
"Actually, I've never seen The Matrix," Lily admitted with a shrug.  
  
Joan gasped in horror and looked at Lily as if her head had just exploded.  
  
"Oh my God! You haven't seen The Matrix?" she yelled.  
  
Lily just sighed. Every time she told someone that she hadn't seen The Matrix, she always got the exact same answer. She figured she must be one of the four people in the entire universe who hadn't seen that damn movie and everyone else just felt the need to say: "Oh my God! You haven't seen the Matrix?"  
  
"See you at eight," she said ignoring Joan and skated out of the building.  
  
"I made him a coffin!" Joan cried as she held up a large cardboard box with Fujisaki Suguru written in her neatest Kanji next to the "Two Man Lift" symbol.  
  
"He's not dead Joan," Lily pointed out with a frown. "Yet."  
  
The group was crammed into the dressing room backstage, all looking at Fujisaki with worry. The young man was lying on the table, pale as a sheet and groaning loudly.  
  
"Cold," he groaned shivering. "Oh so cold."  
  
"Good Lord, what did he eat?" Lily asked in disbelief as Fujisaki started another puking session.  
  
"Nothing except for my soup," Shuichi said.  
  
"I don't think we need Sherlock to solve this one," Hiro said with a sigh as he listened to the audience outside the room.  
  
The concert should have started fifteen minutes ago, and it didn't look like Fujisaki was going to make a miraculous recovery any time soon.  
  
"I guess we'll have to cancel," Sakano said quietly before he started spinning around the room in his usual state of distress.  
  
"I've failed you as a producer!" he wailed and tried to electrocute himself by jamming his finger in a power outlet.  
  
"But Nakano san," Lily said looking at the guitarist, "K san, Sakano san, Shindo san and yourself also ate the soup. Why are you guys still ok?"  
  
"Well to tell the truth, Sakano san and myself poured our helpings in the pot plant over there," Hiro admitted and jerked his thumb at the plant behind him.  
  
Lily looked past him to see a brown, shriveled up plant drooping in the corner. You didn't need a degree in horticulture to tell it was deader then dead.  
  
"I guess Shindo san and K san must have stomachs of steel," Joan hissed in Lily's ear.  
  
"Uh huh."  
  
Shuichi let out a loud sigh and looked away from the ill boy who was now wailing about how he didn't want to die.  
  
"Looks like we don't really have any other choice. My keyboard skills are nothing compared to Fujisaki's and we don't have a backup keyboard player."  
  
K lent against the wall quietly, completely relaxed. It was as if he knew that the problem would solve itself.  
  
"Lily could do it."  
  
"Shut up Joan!"  
  
K smiled, Sakano rescheduled his date with death and both Shuichi and Hiro looked at Joan with surprise.  
  
"What did you say Joan chan?" Shuichi asked, to make sure he'd heard correctly.  
  
"I said Lily could do it," Joan said.  
  
"No I can't!" Lily said quickly.  
  
"Why not? Didn't you say you passed all your music exams with flying colours?"  
  
"Shut up!"  
  
"And that you won the statewide piano competition back home?"  
  
"Shut up!"  
  
"And don't you practice with Tohma after school?"  
  
"Shut up Joan! You're making me sound full of myself!"  
  
Lily was trying her best to silence her friend but Joan wasn't paying attention.  
  
"All those things are true aren't they?" Joan asked her.  
  
"Yes, but that doesn't mean anything. I've never played any Bad Luck songs before and even if I had the music, sight reading for keyboard is twice as hard then for any other instrument."  
  
"However you can sight read cant you?" K asked.  
  
"Well yea but...."  
  
"Great! We'll just get the music for you and the rabid Fujisaki fan girls will have to deal with it," K said cheerfully and thumped Lily on the back.  
  
"What!!!!! K san! You can't do that!" Sakano screamed and grabbed the front of K's shirt.  
  
"Well it doesn't look like we have a whole lot of choice in the matter do we?" K said with a relaxed shrug and a crazed grin.  
  
"That doesn't get us anywhere," Hiro said erasing K's grin. "Fujisaki knows all his music by heart and doesn't keep any written stuff on him. He's paranoid that someone will steal it."  
  
"Crap," cursed Shuichi. Just when everyone had their hopes up, another calculated problem arose.  
  
"Does he keep it on computer by any chance?" Joan asked tugging on Shuichi's sleeve.  
  
"Ah, yea. I think he keeps it in the NG database, but he only every accesses it emergencies," he said looking at the tall girl who just about matched him in height.  
  
"Well I think this qualifies," Joan said cracking her knuckles.  
  
She jammed her hand up the back of her jumper and pulled out her laptop computer.  
  
"Do you go anywhere without that?" Lily asked in a dull tone.  
  
"Nope."  
  
"How does she get around with that thing jammed up her top?" Shuichi whispered to Hiro.  
  
Hiro shrugged and watched Joan as she balanced her laptop on Fujisaki's stomach. As soon as the computer warmed up her hands glided over the keys with the speed and grace of a swan coming in to land.  
  
"What are you doing?" Sakano asked looking over her shoulder.  
  
"Getting the files for my Lily chan," she replied not taking her eyes off the screen.  
  
"But you can't get to them without access codes!"  
  
"Can't I?" Joan asked with a maniacal grin.  
  
"I can't let you hack into the NG database!" Sakano screamed in panic.  
  
"Then turn your back and claim you didn't see it!" Joan ordered and jammed a disk into the A drive.  
  
Sakano pulled at his hair as he thought of what he should do. If he didn't stop Joan he could be sacked and sued until he was so poor that he had to live off expired instant noodles. However, if he took his chances with Lily, the concert could be saved.  
  
The chanting off "Bad Luck! Bad Luck!" from the crowd got louder every time it was said until it was almost deafening.  
  
Sakano sighed. "All right, I guess there's no other choice. The fate of the performance rides on Lily's keyboard skills."  
  
He then started to wail loudly. "Oh the boss is gonna kill me!"  
  
"Ok done!" Joan declared with triumph and grabbed the disk. "You guy's sit tight and I'll be back in two shakes of a lamb's tail!"  
  
"It's a good thing that the security team upstairs had a printer in their coffee room," Joan said with a huge grin and dumped a pile of papers in Lily's arms. "They were so nice, I didn't even have to show them how to get cable internet for free."  
  
"Is anyone aware that I haven't agreed to anything yet?" Lily asked weakly.  
  
"The performance," groaned Fujisaki from his deathbed.  
  
"Oh shut up and die quietly!" Lily snapped. She was three steps away from having a full fledged panic attack.  
  
"Go!" K commanded and pushed her along with Shuichi and Hiro out of the dressing room.  
  
This was it. In under a minute she would be on stage in front of hundreds of people.  
  
Hundreds of people who were sick of waiting.  
  
Hundreds of people who had come to see Fujisaki perform-not her.  
  
Hundreds of angry people!  
  
"Oh God they're gonna cause a riot, climb on stage, grab me and brutally kill me with my own shoes aren't they?" she asked in a tight voice.  
  
"Quite possibly yes."  
  
Shuichi lead the trio on stage and Hiro walked behind Lily, just in case she decided to do a runner.  
  
It was all dark on stage but Lily could just make out the dark shape of the keyboard on the right side of the stage. She groped around in the dark for a bit before she felt the familiar texture of the keys under her fingers. It was comforting in a way.  
  
She propped the music up in front of her and the lights came on stage. They were hot and blinding. She'd already been sweating from nervousness but the lights made her body temperature skyrocket.  
  
The crowd cheered loudly and Shuichi greeted the crowd.  
  
"Sorry to keep you waiting everyone!" he said happily into the microphone. "Fujisaki kun couldn't be here to night due to unexplained illness."  
  
Hiro rolled his eyes. How dense could Shuichi be? Unexplained his foot.  
  
"So please welcome our friend on the keyboards tonight, Lily chan!"  
  
A cheer rose up from the crowd but as K had said, the Fujisaki fans weren't exactly over the moon.  
  
"What happened to Fujisaki sama?"  
  
"Is he alright?"  
  
"Who is this girl exactly?"  
  
"Lily? Sounds foreign."  
  
Lily gave the crowd a small wave as the glare from the lights made her large collection of silver earrings and ear cuffs twinkled and blinded some Bad Luck fans.  
  
It was then she felt a familiar tightness clutch at her chest. Her hand grabbed hold of her T-shirt and her fringe fell into her eyes. She tired to take a few deep breaths but she was finding it very difficult.  
  
'Come on Lily you can beat this thing. You should be over this by now! The doctors are wrong!'  
  
"What's wrong?" Shuichi hissed and held a hand over the microphone. He shuffled ever so slightly in her direction but Lily held up her hand and after a few more seconds she straightened her posture and placed her hands on the keys.  
  
"Must just be nerves," Hiro whispered and Shuichi nodded.  
  
"Ok! Let's start with out further delay! The Rage Beat!"  
  
The crowd screamed and Lily made a panicked shuffle through her music. With a quick prayer and half a second to scan over the music, she let her emotions loose and played.  
  
"Hurry, hurry!" Ryuichi cried as he ran down the hall while dragging Noriko by the arm.  
  
"Calm down Ryuichi," Noriko wailed as they swung around a corner at an alarming speed. "We're only a little late."  
  
Despite her efforts however, Ryuichi didn't slow down and they came to a closed door.  
  
"Kumagoro Beam!" he roared and threw the pink bunny.  
  
The door stayed closed.  
  
"What? No fair!" he wailed and started to get teary.  
  
Noriko lent forward and turned the handle, opening the door.  
  
"Now, now, don't cry Ryuichi," she said soothingly and handed him a lollipop.  
  
He brightened up and a childlike smile covered his face.  
  
The two walked through the door and onto the balcony above the crowd inside the arena. The balcony was reserved for VIPs only, and they definitely qualified.  
  
"What's going on? That's not Fujisaki kun!" Noriko said in alarm and lent over the banister to get a better look at the person on the keyboards, who was a lot shorter than Shuichi.  
  
"What! That's Lily chan! What's she doing here?" she screamed in alarm. "Does Tohma know about this?"  
  
Her eyes then flicked over to Ryuichi but he didn't meet her gaze. He was looking down at the stage, his expression as dark as thunder. 


	6. Chapter Six

"You were so cool Lily!" Joan squealed swinging her bag around her head. She knocked a man in the head and the dangling key chain on the zip chipped a woman's tooth.  
  
Joan, of course, didn't notice, but Lily was bowing apologetically as they moved away with an extremely embarrassed look on her face. Walking to school with Joan sure kept her on her toes.  
  
"Are you still going on about the concert?" Lily asked with a sigh. Joan might have found it the coolest thing since toe socks but Lily looked back on it as the most stressful thing since transferring schools.  
  
"Of course! It was the best social event of the season! For years to come people will be talking about the mysterious girl who appeared out of nowhere to save the show with her electrifying piano skills while Fujisaki Suguru lay on his deathbed!" Joan raved, giving several more people a concussion with her school bag.  
  
"Sorry, sorry, he wasn't on his deathbed, sorry, sorry sir, he just needed his stomach pumped in a real hurry, sorry," Lily corrected as she apologised to Joan's victims.  
  
"Whatever, you still kicked arse!" Joan said with a maniacal grin and raised her bag once more.  
  
Lily jumped up and snatched the school bag from the tall girl's clutches and she could have sworn that she'd heard someone behind her sigh with relief.  
  
"Come on admit it," Joan said slyly and prodded Lily in the chest.  
  
"Well I guess I didn't do too badly."  
  
Joan sagged heavily and sighed. "You just never give yourself a break do you?"  
  
The two rounded the corner and when their school came into view the two transfer students stopped dead.  
  
"What the Hell is this?!" Lily was so shocked by what she saw that she couldn't stop herself from cursing in English.  
  
The front of the Middle School was swarming with reporters, camera men and vans with television logos stamped all over them.  
  
"I knew they'd catch you come day Joan," Lily sighed shaking her head.  
  
"I haven't done anything.yet," Joan said honestly.  
  
"Well lets go find out what all this is about," Lily said flicking back to Japanese and pulled her dazed friend along by her wrist.  
  
Lily spoke Japanese 90% of the time because it was a well know fact that the less you use your second language, the faster you forget it. The other 10% of the time was for when she was talking to Joan or when she was completely stuck with a word.  
  
Together they walked through the large steel entrance gates and walked up to the nearest reporter. She was wearing this season's most fashionable and most expensive outfit and had short blonde hair that had been straightened by a professional.  
  
"Like yo!" Joan said loudly to get her attention.  
  
The reporter turned around and looked at Joan with a very confused expression. Lily banged Joan in the ribs with her elbow and smiled sweetly at the woman.  
  
"Excuse me, but can you please tell me what's going on?"  
  
The reporter was about to tell them to both go away and stop bothering her when someone shouting cut her off.  
  
"Hey, hey! There she is! That's Barton Lily!" a boy from class 2D yelled from across the crowd and pointed straight at Lily.  
  
"We've been waiting for you dear!" the blond woman said with a radical personality change and pulled out a microphone.  
  
Suddenly every microphone, reporter and camera lens in a five kilometre radius were all focused on Lily and she was fired a million questions at once.  
  
"Please tell the readers of "Hit Magazine" about your relationship with Bad Luck!"  
  
"How long have you been playing keyboards for?"  
  
"How does it feel to be the envy of every teenage girl?"  
  
"Have you replaced the band's keyboardist Fujisaki Suguru?"  
  
"Are you going to pursue a musical career of your own?"  
  
"Barton san! Barton san! A statement for the press! Anything at all for the press?"  
  
Lily was waving her hands around to try stop the camera flashes in her eyes and tried to back away from the swarm of press people but they had formed a tight circle around her. She was on the verge of panic when a long arm reached through the wall of people and grabbed the back of Lily's school tie, yanking her out of the prison.  
  
"Run!" yelled Joan, letting go of her friend's collar and pushed her back towards the school entrance.  
  
"Close the gate!" the principal boomed from the school building, "this is our only chance to get the press to cover the lack of funding in government schools!"  
  
The steel gates creaked and groaned as they started to close.  
  
"No!" both the girls yelled but with a defiant clang the gates closed tight.  
  
They both stopped running and looked at each other helplessly. The press was hot on their heels, all of them wanting a statement.  
  
"Plan B!" Joan cried and the tall girl grabbed her shorter friend and threw her up onto the concrete wall.  
  
Lily let out a suitable "oof" as her stomach landed on the top of the wall with her fingers clinging to the edge and her legs dangling.  
  
"Run Lily, run!" Joan yelled and started hitting cameramen and reporters with her schoolbag viciously.  
  
Lily swung her legs over the wall and with a yelp, fell to the ground.  
  
"Owww," she groaned as she sat on the hard pavement and rubbed her sore back. A groan (rather similar to her's) caught her attention and she saw the school gates opening.  
  
"Run damn it!" she heard Joan shriek form inside the gates and Lily got to her feet.  
  
"Lily! Oi Lily! Wait a minute!" she heard the reporters yelling as she ran down the street.  
  
"Leave me alone!"  
  
Once again an invisible clawed hand dug it's way into her chest and squeezed.  
  
**********************************************  
  
"It is her father's wish that Lily does not participate in any more performances and stays out of the public eye. He and I both agree that it's for the best. Don't you think so Sakano san?" Tohma asked with a calm tone. His expression was very similar to that of a river-peaceful on the surface but deep and dark underneath.  
  
"Of course Mr President!" Sakano cried, shaking as he stood before Tohma. "It never would have happened normally but it was just that.."  
  
"I didn't ask for an explanation Sakano san," Tohma said raising from his seat and turning to look out the window. "I just want you to make sure that the situation does not repeat itself."  
  
He then turned to the producer with an expressionless face. "Am I being clear?"  
  
"Ye-yes sir!" Sakano said nervously and trembled sightly as he stood.  
  
Tohma's face then broke into a cheery grin and said, "I'm glad you understand, her father will be most relieved."  
  
Sakano hesitated for a moment then spoke once more.  
  
"Has Sakuma san spoken to her yet?" he asked cautiously and then regretted it.  
  
"I think we're straying from the original subject," Tohma said with the smile still stuck to his face. Sakano gave a nervous gulp and Tohma then said, "you can go now."  
  
"Thankyou sir," and Sakano scurried out of the office.  
  
The door closed with a click and Tohma turned back to the view of Tokyo. Ryuichi had not been pleased to see Lily playing with Bad Luck and when Tohma was told, he wasn't impressed either.  
  
The members of Bad Luck and Nittle Grasper knew both the ups and downs of fame and were quite prepared for any repercussions. Lily however was a thirteen year old girl who had done nothing more than lent a helping hand to her friend Shuichi. She didn't want the fame and wouldn't know how to deal with it.  
  
Both Ryuichi and Tohma had come to live and accept the world of fame but like all celebrities, they wanted to keep their home life private. They would protect it- whatever it took.  
  
**********************************************  
  
'Relax, just relax. Come on, gotta keep breathing. One two, one two. In and out, in and out.'  
  
Lily encouraged herself in her head as she tried to stop wheezing over the bathroom sink. She was now safe in the N-G building and thanks to her access card, the mob hadn't been able to follow her in.  
  
But there was no doubt that they were still downstairs, banging on the glass doors, yelling questions. She'd have to go and tell Tohma but there was no way she was going to face him in her current state.  
  
Lily washed her face with some cool water and tore some paper towel out of the dispenser to dry off. In the mirror her face was still red and her eyes were still watery but this was about as good as it was going to get.  
  
A disturbing whiny sound was echoing off the toilet walls and feeling a sense of defeat in her stomach, she pulled a small object out of her bag.  
  
A few seconds later she left the toilets and took an elevator ride up to Tohma's office. With a quick knock she walked in and Tohma put down his teacup.  
  
"Tohma I.." Lily broke off as she saw Tohma smiling face. "You already know don't you?" she asked with a loud exhale.  
  
Tohma nodded and gestured for her to sit down on the couch opposite him.  
  
"Just sit down and relax Lily chan," he said pouring another cup of tea. "All's been taken care of downstairs. I'm just sorry I couldn't nip this problem in the bud before it bloomed."  
  
"Can't put anything past you," said sinking into the couch with relief.  
  
"Exactly right," Tohma said with a smile, and placing the teapot back on its stand he pushed the second cup of tea towards Lily across the table.  
  
Lily leaned over to grab the tea. "Thanks a he-oww!"  
  
The white teacup fell from her fingers and the tea spilt, the designer carpet soaking it up. Lily's hand flew to her chest and a pained expression passed over her face for a few moments.  
  
"What's wrong?" Tohma asked sounding worried and put his cup down.  
  
"Nothing-nothing," Lily said with a fake smile of reassurance. "I'm just a bit sore from all that running."  
  
"Do I need to take you to the."  
  
"No, no I'll be fine-really."  
  
**********************************************  
  
"You mean it! Really K! You'll take me to the zoo for real?" Ryuichi asked pulling on K's shirt excitedly.  
  
"Of course, I am your former manager after all," K said brightly. "And you haven't been there in ages have you Ryuichi?"  
  
"Nope," Ryuichi said hugging Kumagoro tighter with a sparkle in his eye. "But Noriko took me to the circus last week and I saw a clown, a elephant, a tiger and people who jumped up and down and did this and that."  
  
Ryuichi bounded around the room singing and laughing while K's thoughts wandered. They went back to the day he'd picked Bad Luck up at the airport. Shuichi had completely flipped out when he told him who's Lily's father was.  
  
"But how could he? He's world famous! I know everything about him, and, and no one ever said anything about his wife or kids or any other family! How could this be? He's the worldly Sakuma Ryuichi!" Shuichi had wailed.  
  
"Yea who'd marry him? Anyone would think the guy's mentally challenged," Hiro prompted from the back seat.  
  
"Well, Christina was studying to become a psychiatrist," K said thoughtfully. "And who said you had to be married to have kids? Marriage is no more than a piece of paper to some people."  
  
"I guess that's true," Shuichi said calming down.  
  
"I guess we were just surprised," said Fujisaki after a minute or two. "Because of the way he acts and all."  
  
"What makes you think he's always been like that?" K said looking at him through his sunnies as they stopped at a red light. "Did you ever think that his childlike energy is just a way of hiding something?"  
  
"Eh? Hiding what?" Shuichi asked as his headache from the plane started to fade.  
  
K turned his attention back to the road and drove for several minutes before he spoke again.  
  
"Something that hurts."  
  
"What do you mean?" Hiro asked.  
  
"Ah, never mind," K replied shaking off his serious mood. "Did you meet up with Judy while you were in America? How's she going?"  
  
"K! Hey K!" Ryuichi's voice brought K back to the current moment. "Are you ok? You looked a bit sleepy sleepy na no da."  
  
"Oh, I'm fine!" K said brightly waving his hands. "I was just thinking about something."  
  
"Like what?"  
  
"It's not important," K assured him placing his hands on his shoulders. "It's really nothing at all".  
  
**********************************************  
  
"Bah! Stupid head!" Lily yelled at the copying machine as it jammed up for the fourth time in the past time ten minutes.  
  
"Nice insult," someone complimented from behind.  
  
"I try not to get too carried away," she said kicking the machine out of frustration and much to her surprise it started to copy without a hitch. Lily looked at it with a pained expression and with a sigh ran her fingers through her short hair. "This is so screwed."  
  
Lily turned around to apologise to her companion for her outburst to come face to face with Tohma's cousin.  
  
"Oh Fujisaki san," she said, surprised. "I didn't realise it was you! How are you feeling?"  
  
"Much better thanks," he said smiling. "Tokyo hospital has a great stomach pump. Not that I'm in a real hurry to repeat the experience."  
  
Fujisaki turned to a light shade of frog green as he recalled the incident. "Anyway, I didn't get a chance to thank you for your help on Saturday night. If you hadn't of jumped in the concert would have been cancelled for sure. However if this had been any other normal band.."  
  
He trailed off to mutter things about his colleges under his breath that Lily could hardly make out.  
  
"I'm just glad I could help out," she replied modestly.  
  
"Anyway what are you doing here? Isn't today a school day?"  
  
"Long story," Lily groaned with a slouch.  
  
Fujisaki was tempted to ask more but thought better of it. Over Lily's shoulder he saw the photocopier printing abnormally large amounts of paper.  
  
"Err Lily chan," he said uneasily.  
  
"Yea?" Lily said looking up from her slouching position.  
  
"Were you after that many?" he asked pointed to the broken machine.  
  
"Huh? What do you..arrggg!" she yelled and started to bash the buttons on the control panel.  
  
All Fujisaki could do was stand by with a concerned expression.  
  
"STUPID HEAD!" Lily yelled again and pulled the plug out of the wall.  
  
She put her head down on the dysfunctional piece of machinery and bashed it with her fists. After a few seconds she stood up and headed out the door.  
  
"Where are you going?" asked Suguru.  
  
"Taking a walk. My lungs could do with some fresh air."  
  
'Good luck trying to find it in Tokyo,' he thought.  
  
**********************************************  
  
Yuki Eiri had writer's block, and it wasn't the kind that could be fixed by Thesaurus.com. He lent back in his chair and thought about how he could cure it.  
  
Beer? Nah, he'd already had six cans so far today.  
  
Do a domestic chore and come back to it later? No, the house was spotless.  
  
Go and talk to someone to change his train of thought? No, he hated people.  
  
Look for an insperation? Yea right, the closest thing he had to romance in his apartment was a mountain of unopened fan mail in pink envelopes.  
  
Sex? Yuki looked at his watch and grunted. Shuichi wouldn't be home for another four hours.  
  
Defeated, the acclaimed author took off his glasses and threw them lightly onto the desk. He rubbed his face and saved his work before turning the laptop off. There was no point just sitting in front of the flat screen when there was nothing else to write. He would just have to go out for a while and come back to it later.  
  
He put his shoes on by the front door and slipped into his cream coloured trench coat. His cigarette supply was low and the globe in the living room had blown that morning. He'd have to replace it before it got dark or Shuichi would break more things by accident then a psychotic mongoose.  
  
The crisp winter air blew around him as he stepped out of the apartment building and set off to the corner store. He wore his classy pair of sunglasses despite the fact the sun was well hidden by impending dark clouds. They weren't really there to protect his "irresistible" eyes or to add charisma to his physique, but simply just to fool the dimwitted fangirls (and in some rare cases, fanboys).  
  
Sure, it was those very fans who paid his rent, but they really did get on his nerves. In the early days he hadn't really had that problem, but now he needed a special post office box for the fan mail. After book seven (entitled "Groove") he bought a paper shredder. It gave him an evil sort of thrill to watch Hello Kitty notepaper and love heart covered envelopes being sliced heartlessly into confetti before his eyes.  
  
Yuki considered his paper shredder and his blender to be the best investments he had ever made. Shuichi told him that was scary, but what did that kid know?  
  
After stocking up on cancer sticks and buying the right kind of globe he headed home. Not being in a hurry he thought he'd walk back through the park. There was still a few hours before the school kids finished classes and used the park as a make-out place or a drug seminar.  
  
He walked up the all too familiar path to his favourite bench. On one cool night a year ago a piece of paper had blown down the path and landed at his feet. He had read the lyrics to an appalling love song and had told the writer he had zero talent.  
  
Yuki looked up at the bare trees and let out a sort of a smile. It sure had been an interesting year.  
  
His smile quickly turned to a full frown frown when his bench came into view. It was already being occupied by someone. It was a young girl who was reading a book entitled "Cool".  
  
'Just what I need, a fangirl playing hooky with school' Yuki groaned mentally. He picked up his pace and the girl finished the last page.  
  
She muttered something under her breath and the author haltered. That couldn't be right. No one had every said that before. His English must be getting rusty.  
  
That theory was thwarted half a second later when the girl repeated herself.  
  
"Crap," she said dully. "Absolute utter crap. Why it's on the Top 10 booklist I'll never now." She then lifted the hard covered book off her lap and dumped it in the bin next to the bench. She gave a satisfied smile as a clang rose from the bin.  
  
Yuki was dumbstruck. He had heard that sort of thing before from one or two professional critics, but never from a reader. Let alone a child. As far as he knew girls were supposed to be giddy and craving romance.  
  
Logic told him to ignore it and go home.  
  
Curiosity told him to grab the kid by the front of her school dress and demand a detailed critical analysis.  
  
'Come on Eiri,' logic whispered in his ear. 'What does this kid now about literature? Besides, you're never bothered by a bad review.'  
  
'That's right,' he thought and started to walk again slowly. 'What would this brat know? I bet she's never read anything that required more thought than the Babysitters Club.'  
  
"Now for something good," the girl's voice said behind him.  
  
Yuki twisted his head ever so slightly. A new book was now resting in the girl's hand and she looked deeply engrossed. The complete opposite to when she was reading his book.  
  
He squinted at the title and the English alphabet ran through his head.  
  
"William Shakespeare's Hamlet."  
  
Curiosity won. 


	7. Chapter Seven

10 years ago  
  
"Ryuichi can you take Lily for a while? I have to get some stuff from the post office," a woman in her early twenties said to her boyfriend and handed the toddler over.  
  
"Sure Chris," Ryuichi said with a smile and propped his daughter up on his shoulders.  
  
Lily grabbed onto his long hair with both hands and looked around at the world keenly with her blue eyes.  
  
"Meet you back here in half an hour ok?" Christina said. "And no trips to the toy store."  
  
"Sure. Let's go Lily-chan," the young man said and with a wave to her two favourite people, Christina went off in the opposite direction.  
  
Naturally, Ryuichi headed in the direction of the toy store. Christina had banned him from buying Lily toys because he was always short on cash. Being a musician didn't pay a lot when you were just starting out.  
  
Christina was putting herself through medical school to be a psychiatrist so they weren't exactly living the high life. She did have a huge inheritance by her late father, but she couldn't touch that account until she was twenty-five, so there was still a few years to wait.  
  
Ryuichi didn't have any known family still alive, and trying to get financial support from Chris' family was like getting blood from a stone.  
  
'Nasty pack of back stabbing sell outs' Ryuichi thought and pushed the door to the toy store open.  
  
He lowered Lily off of his shoulders and put her on the floor.  
  
"Ok sweetie," have a look around and pick a toy to take home," Ryuichi said crouching down and patting Lily's brown hair.  
  
"Yay!" she cried and toddled off.  
  
Ryuichi stayed where he was but made sure to keep his eye on her at all times.  
  
Sure Christina would string him up by his ankles when she found out, but Tohma had told him that their new single was doing well, so some money was bound to be coming their way soon.  
  
"Daddy!" Lily cried from across the store. Ryuichi walked over to where she was and crouched down beside her.  
  
"What is it?" he asked with a smile.  
  
"That one," Lily said standing on her toes and pointing to the toy sitting on the shelf way above her head.  
  
Ryuichi stood up and grabbed the toy for her with ease. He handed her the pink rabbit and Lily hugged it tightly.  
  
"Come on Lily chan," he said looking at his watch. We'd better go and meet your mum.  
  
After paying, he propped Lily and her new toy up on his shoulders again and walked back towards the meeting place.  
  
"What's your new friend's name Lily chan?" Ryuichi asked his daughter.  
  
"Kumagoro!" Lily cried happily.  
  
"Err 'Kuma' is bear honey," Ryuichi explained nicely. "Don't you mean 'Usagi?'"  
  
"No! Kumagoro!" Lily said firmly.  
  
"Ok whatever," Ryuichi said with a shrug of defeat. He and Christina had decided to get Lily to learn Japanese along with English at an early age. She was doing quite well considering she was only three, but sometimes she got a word wrong and wouldn't budge.  
  
'If only she was as healthy as she is smart,' Ryuichi thought and bowed his head a bit.  
  
"Ryuichi! Hey Ryuichi!" a voice snapped him out of his thoughts. He could see Christina waving at him with her beautiful smile across the road.  
  
"Wait right there! I'll be right over!" she yelled over the noise of the traffic.  
  
Those words proved to be her last.  
  
**********************************************  
  
"The characters were cardboard?" Yuki repeated with a mouthful of cigarette.  
  
"Yea, none of them had any personality whatsoever. It wasn't believable. All the women were drop dead gorgeous but for some strange reason hopelessly single, and the guys were perfect and just far too good to be true," Lily said with a shrug. "It just didn't make any sense."  
  
She looked at her new companion to try and get some form of emotion from his face. She didn't have much success, this guy clearly wasn't much of a talker.  
  
"Umm do you want to hear more or was that it?" Lily asked slowly.  
  
"Continue if you want," he said lighting up a new cigarette.  
  
"Well I think the passionate love scene, if you could call it that, would have crashed Thesaurus.com single handedly. Some of the worst metaphors I'd ever heard of were in there. It was like reading the graffiti off the back of a toilet door."  
  
"What did you think of the ending?" Yuki asked. Sure his book was being torn to pieces in front of his very eyes, but he had to hear what this girl had to say. It was the most honest review he'd had from a female in years.  
  
Lily was caught rather off guard. The stone human had spoken.  
  
"Interesting..but predictable," she said trying to wave the cigarette smoke away from her face.  
  
"Was there anything about the book that you actually liked?" Yuki grunted after taking a long drag on his cigarette.  
  
"Uh, let me see, no," Lily said and coughed for a bit. When she stopped she took a deep breath and with a cautious glance, turned to the stranger sitting next to her. "Sorry."  
  
"You certainly think very high of your reviews," Yuki tuttered blowing more smoke out of his mouth while holding the cigarette between two fingers.  
  
"If you didn't want my opinion then why did you ask?" Lily snapped back. "It doesn't hurt to look at things differently."  
  
She coughed some more as the cold air brought more smoke towards her.  
  
Yuki didn't answer and the two sat silently for a few moments. They both watched the dark clouds over the city from their perfect spot on the park bench. Without the noise and pollution, Tokyo looked rather peaceful and pretty.  
  
The first drop of rain splashed down on Lily's hand and she looked up at the rain clouds. It was time to get going.  
  
"Nice talking to you," she said and after a quick bow set off down the path at a quick walk. She'd already done enough running for the day.  
  
Yuki finished the rest of his cigarette before butting it out on the metal bin cover and threw it in to join his rejected book. He then stood up and grabbing the grocery bag, headed home, the rain growing heavier by the minute.  
  
By the time he reached the apartment the noise of the rain was almost deafening and his jacket was soaked through. He left his shoes by the door and hung his dripping coat on the coat rack.  
  
It was time to get back to work.  
  
**********************************************  
  
"Sparking Love huh?" Hiro said as he held the piece of paper in his hand. "It's a good title, but what about the lyrics?"  
  
"Um, lyrics, right. Let's burn that bridge when we come to it huh?" Shuichi said nervously rubbing the back of his head.  
  
All of the crew gave him dark glares.  
  
"Do you at least know what the song is going to be about Shuichi?" Hiro asked, his tone getting more serious.  
  
"It's about love."  
  
"And?" growled Hiro, leaning in closer to his friend's face.  
  
"It's sparkling."  
  
Everyone fell over in disbelief.  
  
"Shuichi, I, you, song, grrr," Hiro couldn't get the right words out and just buried his face in his hands with defeat.  
  
"What? You can't rush art you know," Shuichi said with a shrug as the crew picked themselves up off the floor.  
  
"Why don't we call it a day?" Sakano suggested looking at his watch. It was quite clear to him that they weren't going to get any more work done for the day.  
  
His idea was widely supported and the musicians started to pack up their things. They were all worried about Shuichi's new song. He needed to have it finished before Tokyo Bay Music Festival and with his tendency to go into a slump before deadlines, it wasn't looking too bright.  
  
"I'm a going now!" Shuichi cried brightly and the band exchanged goodbyes.  
  
The pink haired singer set off at a run with his backpack strapped on. He was keen to see Yuki, even if Yuki never seemed to be happy to see him. After a short trip in the elevator Shuichi dashed towards the front door.  
  
It was pouring with rain but that didn't really matter to him. At the speed he ran he'd be home in no time. He stepped outside and took a deep breath of the moist air. It felt cool and refreshing after being cooped up in a stuffy building all day.  
  
He turned to start his run and nearly fell over something on the pavement. He didn't notice it a first because it was dark, but a small figure was curled up against the building.  
  
"Lily chan!" he cried in amazement.  
  
Lily lifted her head off of her knees and looked up at Shuichi with a dull expression. "Oh hi," she said wearily and put on a thin smile.  
  
"What are you doing out in the rain? You're getting all wet!" Shuichi proclaimed and grabbing her wrist, hauled her to her feet. His face lost its energetic smile and a look of concern crossed it.  
  
Lily's face was red and sweaty, like she'd just finished running a marathon. He could see that the smile she had on her face was fixed there like a mask, trying to hide what she was really feeling.  
  
"Are you ok?" he asked.  
  
"Oh I'm fine, I just think I have that flu that's going around." she said softly as she breathed deeply.  
  
"The one that's killing all those people at the airports?"  
  
"No not SARS!" Lily exclaimed and then coughed loudly. We actually it was more of a hack, like the sort a grandfather has after smoking for fifty odd years.  
  
Passers by moved away at the sound of disease and Shuichi rubbed her on the back. When she stopped coughing he held her hand and took her inside the building.  
  
He sat her down in a large sofa chair near the reception desk and Lily tried to get her breathing back to normal.  
  
"Are you all right?" he asked kneeing down beside the chair.  
  
"Yea-every-thing-is-cool. Can-I-have-some-thing-to-drink please?" she said in between deep breaths.  
  
Shuichi ran like a frightened gazelle to the drink machines and thrust a bottle of cold water in Lily's hand upon return.  
  
Lily took a large gulp but managed to get more down her front that in her mouth. Giving up, she let her head fall back on the top of the sofa chair and puffed for a bit. "I'll-be-fine. Don't-worry-about-me. Go-home-see- Yuki."  
  
"Are you really fine? You don't sound well at all," Shuichi said with concern and placed his hand on her forehead.  
  
Lily brushed it away quickly. "I-just-need-to-rest. Go-home-Shindo-san. I'm- not-worth-the-trouble."  
  
"What does that mean?" Shuichi grumbled with a frown. "You're my friend! Of course you're worth the trouble! I care about you."  
  
Lily rolled her head to face him and gave him a smile in between the puffing.  
  
"That makes you the first."  
  
"Lily chan, what's going on?"  
  
The two looked up and saw Tohma standing before them, holding Lily's bag in his gloved hand. Shuichi stood up and his posture stiffened. Regardless of what reasoning Tohma had for his past actions, Shuichi still didn't trust him.  
  
"Hi-Tohma-san," Lily said sitting up slowly with sweat dripping from her brow.  
  
"Does it hurt?" he asked crouching down in front of her and brushed her long fringe out of her eyes with his free hand.  
  
Lily nodded and let out a loud exhale.  
  
"I think we should go and get you something for it," Tohma said grimly and helped her up slowly.  
  
"No-it's-ok," Lily said softly and took a deep breath. "It's just because of all the running this morning, and I ran to get out of the rain when I was half way here."  
  
Shuichi was wearing a dumbfounded look, What was going on here? Lily didn't want to tell him what was going on, and by the way Seguchi was ignoring him, it looked like he wanted to keep him in the dark too.  
  
"We'll talk more at home," Tohma said and they started to walk away slowly.  
  
"Bye Shindo san," Lily whispered and rose her hand in a gesture of goodbye.  
  
"Hey, wait a minute," he said.  
  
"I thankyou for looking after her Shindo san," Tohma said finally acknowledging Shuichi's existence. "But I will take over from here."  
  
Lily gave another wave and with that, the two of them left.  
  
'What's going on?' Shuichi thought. 


	8. Chapter Eight

"Yea, so anyway Joan, was there any other work I have to do before tomorrow? Yes, that does mean you're actually going to have to do your own work today," Lily said with a thin smile as she talked into her mobile phone. "Yea, I'm fine. Tohma is just over reacting, but never mind. A day off school is a day off school right? Ok see ya."  
  
Lily ended the call with a press of a button and flipped the top down. She was stuck at N-G for the day because Tohma was demanding that she took the day easy and relaxed.  
  
'That wont be a problem,' she thought as she rubbed her sore eyes and yawned. 'I have nothing to do at all today. Except for that thing.' Her lip curved into a sneer as she thought about it. This was one assignment she wasn't looking forward to.  
  
She was distracted by that thought by her parched throat. There wasn't a vending machine on the floor so she jumped in the next vacant elevator down.  
  
She got off at the bottom floor where she knew where the machines were. She jammed some coins in the slot and the buttons lit up.  
  
'Which Fanta shall I have? Orange, tropical, or grape?'  
  
Lily wrinkled her nose at the thought of grape. Joan had bought her a can of it once and Lily didn't quite know what to make of it. It hadn't been bad, but it hadn't been great either. Orange was definitely the go.  
  
Her finger pushed the bright button and with a thump the can bounded out the machine. Lily managed to catch it before it hit her in the head and took a cautious step back. She'd never come across a vending machine with a temper before.  
  
The hairs on the back of her neck prickled and she turned around. Whatever had been looking at her had vanished around the corner. Lily jogged over and swung around to just see the elevator door close with a snap.  
  
'Who was that?' she wondered.  
  
Someone clapped their hand on her shoulder and she whirled around with a small scream. Sakano took a step back and raised both his hands like a hostage at gunpoint (he had plenty of practice at it thanks to K).  
  
"Excuse me!" he said loudly. "I didn't mean to scare you! I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" Sakano then started to bow deeply repeatedly like a novelty drinking bird.  
  
"It's Ok!" Lily said quickly, a little alarmed by his deep feeling of regret. "You just startled me."  
  
Sakano sighed and pushed his glasses back up. Lily looked back around the corner for a second before giving her full attention to the producer.  
  
"Are you all right? For minute there you looked nostalgic," he said.  
  
"Yea, I'm fine, I just thought that I knew a person from somewhere," she thought for a second before shrugging. "Must be a de ja vu sort of thing I guess."  
  
'But I wonder.'  
  
"LILY CHAN!!!!"  
  
"What the.. arrgg!"  
  
Someone ran right into her at full speed and trapped her in a bone- crunching hug, lifting her feet off the ground.  
  
"Shuichi, Shuichi!" she gasped and waved her arms around. "It hurts when you do that!"  
  
"I was so worried about you! You looked like you were in a whole heap of pain the other day; I couldn't stop thinking about it. But I had to when Yuki told me to shut up so he could.."  
  
Sakano clapped his hand over Shuichi's mouth and looked around fearfully for Tohma. "Shindo kun!" he squeaked  
  
"Work," Shuichi said completing his sentence when Sakano removed his hand. He threw a filthy look in the producer's direction, whom might I add was looking thoroughly embarrassed.  
  
Lily was blue in the face and with her free hand, pulled on Shuichi's sleeve.  
  
"Hmmm?"  
  
"A-a-a-ir!" she gasped.  
  
Shuichi let her go and Lily sucked in enough air to fill a balloon.  
  
"So how are you feeling?" Shuichi asked cheerfully.  
  
"Just peachy," Lily replied sarcastically.  
  
"That's good! Hey do you want to come with us to our press interview? It might be a little boring, but afterwards I'm sure we can do something fun. You aren't going to school today, right?" he asked looking at her jeans, windcheater and rollerblades.  
  
"Yea," she said with a big sigh and straightened up. "That does sound like fun."  
  
"Great! You can help me with my new song! I need to put some English in it somewhere, but I'm not sure what to say-or if it would make sense," Shuichi said and started walking to the waiting car outside.  
  
A pink rabbit stuck its head around the corner and said at the sight of the retreating figures, "Good thing Shuichi is looking after Lily chan na no da."  
  
*********************************************  
  
"I know, what about 'Hot Ice cream'? Does that work?" Shuichi asked excitedly as he lent over Fujisaki to talk to Lily.  
  
"No, not really," Lily said slowly, leaning over Fujisaki while holding the crumpled piece of paper.  
  
"What about 'Cold Ice cream'? Is that any better?"  
  
"Well that kind of goes without saying don't you think?"  
  
"You're sitting here on the way back," Fujisaki grumbled to Hiro.  
  
So far Shuichi had been able to write about half a verse, but as for the rest of the song, they weren't getting very far.  
  
The car pulled to a halt outside a caffe that had a huge sign announcing that it was closed for the morning due to a large booking.  
  
"Hey how about 'Dark Light'?"  
  
"You seem to have trouble with adjectives don't you?" Lily asked with a look of discomfort as they all climbed out of the car.  
  
"Let's get a move on shall we?" Sakano said clapping his hands. "It's always good to be punctual."  
  
"Welcome!" a well-dressed lady said as the group walked into the caffe. The tables and chairs had been moved to make room for cameras and lighting and there were about half a dozen reporters focusing their attention on them.  
  
Lily inconspicuously shuffled back behind K who was at the tail end of the group. The mere sight of reporters made her stomach drop.  
  
The throbbing pain that had started when she'd got out of he car grew in her chest with every heartbeat. Fingers wrapped themselves around each cushion like lung and squeezed. Her throat burnt like a growing fire that fended off any water or wind. It was painful, and it was something she knew very well.  
  
'By God not now,' she thought as the pain continued to rise. She broke out into a sweat of fear and covered her mouth with her hand as she coughed up mucus. The pain was almost unbearable.  
  
Looking up, she could see the rest of the group was talking a laughing with the reporters, completely oblivious to what was going on behind them.  
  
Quickly as possible, Lily crept across the caffe without being seen. She pushed the door open and stepped outside.  
  
She dug into her small backpack while she continued to cough and wheeze. It she didn't get some of it soon there'd be trouble. Her heart lifted when her hand found the much-needed object.  
  
She pulled out the L-shaped piece of blue plastic, and pulling the small cap off, placed it in her mouth and pushed the top.  
  
Nothing happened.  
  
Lily pulled it away from her lips and shook it like a small child would shake an unfortunate family pet.  
  
Empty.  
  
'Oh crap.'  
  
Lily looked through the glass window and saw her friends sitting down with drinks and talking about their upcoming performance. She couldn't go in there and tell them. It wasn't worth interrupting something so important.  
  
Some people call it karma, some call it an act of God while others refer to it as fate. People who don't believe just call it sheer dumb luck. But whatever it is, it showed up. It the form of a shop.  
  
Well actually, in the form of the man who ran the shop, but who cares, the point of the matter is that it saved our heroin.  
  
The man walked out of the store across the road and placed a billboard on the pavement. Lily saw him and her eyes caught sight of the red paint on the sign.  
  
GENERAL FAMILY CHEMIST OPEN 9AM TO 11PM  
  
**********************************************  
  
13 years ago  
  
Christina walked up the street deep in thought. In her head she tried to think of how she was going to tell Ryuichi. It wasn't going to be easy, but she decided that it should go somewhat along the lines of this.  
  
'Hi honey how are you? What do you think of the number three? Good things come in threes don't they? There are three members in your band after all, and you like your band don't you?' She pulled open the door to an old building where Nittle Grasper would be recording later that day and tried to think about what came in threes. Everything good she could think of came in a pair.  
  
Socks, gloves, twin CD sets, back to back TV episodes, batteries, earrings, Twix bars, the list went on. A pair was what they already were and they were happy.  
  
She walked into a room where Tohma was playing blackjack with Noriko, and loosing badly. They both looked up and smiled.  
  
"Hi Christina," Tohma said with his pleasant voice.  
  
"Hiya little cutie," Noriko chirped and rose to hug her. Tohma took this opportunity to look at the cards she'd left on the table.  
  
"Hi guys," Chris said with a smile while hugging Noriko. Seeing her friends took her mind off of her situation for just a few seconds.  
  
The two musicians resumed their game and Christina sat down on the couch next to Tohma. She took one of her medical books out of her backpack and tried to read.  
  
"Large amounts of pain are caused by the mother's contractions as she tries to push the baby out of.."  
  
She closed the book in a real hurry and stuffed it back in her bag, closing it tightly as if she was afraid the book was going to jump out and tell her more gruesome details.  
  
"Hey Tohma," she said slowly, averting her eyes from her backpack.  
  
"Yes?" he asked looking at her through his long blond fringe.  
  
"What comes in threes?" she asked.  
  
Tohma looked up thoughtfully and Noriko used the opportunity to look at his cards.  
  
"Witches come in threes according to legend," he said after a moment.  
  
"That really doesn't help," Christina said with a sigh and sagged down.  
  
"What's the matter sweetheart?" Noriko said, sensing Chris' worried feelings, got up and sat next to her.  
  
"You guys have known Ryuichi for a long time right?" she asked, looking back and forth between Noriko and Tohma.  
  
"That's one way of putting it," Tohma said throwing his cards on the table.  
  
"What do you think is the best way for telling him something major?" she asked.  
  
The two band members exchanged confused looks over Christina's head and then looked back at her.  
  
"What's wrong honey?" Noriko asked pushing some of Christina's long blond hair behind her ear.  
  
"Well I went to the doctors today, to see why I've been feeling so nauseous lately," she started.  
  
Tohma picked up a cup of water from the table and took a mouthful.  
  
"And he said that I'm pregnant."  
  
The water shot out of Tohma's mouth like a power packed sprinkler, spraying it all over Christina's head.  
  
She turned to give him a dirty look and he covered his mouth as the droplets fell from her face onto the carpet.  
  
"Sorry," he murmured.  
  
A faint squeak from the doorway caught their attention and they all turned.  
  
A man with long brown hair wearing a red headband and jeans with holes in the knee area stood in the doorframe, eyes wide as fishbowls on his pale face.  
  
"Oh Ryu chan," Noriko said standing up in a hurry with an awkward smile. "We didn't hear you come in."  
  
Tohma whipped the remaining water away from his lips and stood up.  
  
"Now Ryuichi," he said calmly. "Just take a deep breath and come and sit down."  
  
There was a loud thump as Ryuichi hit the ground.  
  
**********************************************  
  
"I guess she didn't sleep well last night," K said as he watched Lily sleeping on Hiro's shoulder in the rear view mirror.  
  
"I guess, or maybe she's been pulling all night study sessions for school," Shuichi said as he poked Lily in the cheek a few times.  
  
Fujisaki lent over and slapped Shuichi's hand. "Stop that!" he commanded with a frown.  
  
Shuichi was about to yell back at him when Hiro spoke. "Hey everyone shut up for a minute."  
  
K and Sakano stopped their conversation and Shuichi withheld his comment to Fujisaki. There should have been silence, but there was one little thing interrupting it.  
  
No one noticed it at first, but ever so slowly, they became aware for a small rasping noise. Sakano tapped the air vent on the dashboard, however the noise continued.  
  
"Where's it coming from?" Shuichi asked fearfully. The idea of ghosts and people hiding in the car boot started to creep up on him.  
  
"It's Lily," Hiro said after a minute.  
  
Shuichi leaned in closer to her and strained his ear, trying to find the problem. Her chest moved in and out, and every time the noise escaped.  
  
"Her breathing," Shuichi muttered.  
  
Her raised his head and spoke louder. "It's her breathing. I think she's finding it hard to breathe."  
  
Lily woke with a yelp and everyone jumped. She covered her mouth with her hands and started to cough loudly. Hiro rubbed her on the back and slowly she started to stop coughing and took long, deep breaths.  
  
"Are you ok?" Shuichi asked touching her arm.  
  
"Yea, yea," she said quickly. "I just had a bit of a bad dream." She then stopped talking and a look of embarrassment crawled over her face. "Err, who did I fall asleep on?"  
  
"Me," Hiro said with a charming smile.  
  
Lily went red and nearly fainted.  
  
"We're here," Sakano said pulling up outside an ice cream parlour. "K and I will be back to pick you up in and hour."  
  
"And if you're not ready," K left the sentence hang and removed the safety catch on his gun.  
  
The musicians and Lily climbed out of the car and walked inside the building.  
  
"I'll be back in a minute," Lily said and headed for the Ladies.  
  
The three males sat down at an empty booth and put on hats and sunglasses. They were at the ice cream parlour to fulfil Shuichi's promise of doing something fun. The place was pretty empty since it was a school day, but it was always good to play it save and be incognito.  
  
Suguru and Hiro each grabbed a menu but Shuichi was deep it thought. Well, about as deep in thought as he could get anyway.  
  
'She's tired, having trouble breathing, has bloodshot eyes, a bad cough, wont tell me what's wrong and Seguchi san keeps me it the dark. What does this all mean?'  
  
A conclusion popped up in his mind and Shuichi started to cry and scream at the top of his lungs. Waitresses dropped their orders, other customers threw the trio strange looks and Hiro raised his menu up to his face to avoid getting wet.  
  
"Shindo san what's wrong?" Fujisaki asked with a dazed expression.  
  
"Lily chan is taking drugs!" 


	9. Chapter Nine

"Dear sir or madam will you read my book? It took me years to write will you take a look? It's based on the novel by a man named Lear, And I need a job, so I want to be a paperback writer, Paperback writer! It's a dirty story, about a dirty man, And his gleaming wife doesn't understand, The son is working for The Daily Mail, It's a steady job but he wants to be a paperback writer, Paperback writer!"  
  
Joan stopped singing and pulled her head out of her manga. Lily stood in front of her panting with messy hair and odd socks on.  
  
"Morning!" Joan cried cheerfully taking the earphones out of her ears before putting her diskman and The Beatles back in her school bag.  
  
"Morning," Lily said still puffing and flopped herself down on the bench beside her friend. "Sorry I'm late."  
  
"That's usually my line," Joan said with a chuckle and took her glasses off. "Did you have a good sleep in?"  
  
"Not really," Lily said, her puffing starting to slow. "I only got about four hours sleep last night, or this morning, or, whatever."  
  
"Up late doing yesterday's maths exercises?" Joan asked casually, holding her glasses up in the sunlight to inspect how clean they were.  
  
"What maths exercises? You didn't tell me any maths exercises when I rang yesterday!"  
  
"Yea I did," Joan said calmly putting her glasses back on.  
  
"No you bloody well did not!"  
  
Joan scrunched up her face as she tried to think back a whole 24 hours.  
  
"Oh I know now!" she said suddenly, her face brightening up with a smile. "I must have kept talking after I hung up the phone yesterday. Sorry, I do that sometimes."  
  
Lily grabbed her by the front of her school dress and shook her violently. "How could you do this to me? You, my best friend! I'm totally screwed now! Yamagata sensei is a frigging nightmare! He'll put me through some kind of painful torture for not doing the work!"  
  
"Stress less," Joan said waving her hand up and down, her grin never faltering. "It's true that Yamagata sensei is an advocate of the devil, but you got Da Queen on your side! Leave it to me!"  
  
Lily found the words "Leave it to me," about as reassuring as Shuichi's "I'll get the song done on time." Neither could be truly believed.  
  
With a sigh Lily let go of Joan and the two got up, it was time for their routine walk to school.  
  
"So moving on to the lighter side of the news, how's my Shuichi?" Joan's eyes became love hearts at the words "my Shuichi".  
  
"He is not yours," Lily said with a frown, "and need I add, he never will be. But now that you mention it, he was acting really weird yesterday."  
  
"Weirder than usual?" Joan asked looking surprised.  
  
"Yea. Every time he looked at me he just burst into tears and hugged Nakano san. He must be drinking a hell of a lot of red cordial."  
  
************************************************  
  
Shuichi put his mobile back in his pocket and opened up the brochure for the hundredth time that hour. The lady on the Drug Help Line had given him heaps of advice, but this was only after he had convinced her that the one on drugs wasn't himself. Not that he could really blame her, he had been in a hysterical state when he'd rung.  
  
He had asked for help from the other band members, but his idea had been widely rejected.  
  
"It's not good to get involved with other people's matters Shindo kun," Sakano had said rubbing his hands nervously and hoping Tohma wasn't in earshot. "You never know what will happen."  
  
"I extremely doubt that Lily is taking drugs," Hiro said in a matter of fact tone when Sakano's reasoning failed. "She's not that kind of a kid, she's too smart."  
  
"What else could it be Hiro?" Shuichi whined.  
  
"Well I don't know," he admitted after a second. "But Sakano san is right, it's not good to interfere with other people's business."  
  
The lady at the call centre however had been much more helpful. She had suggested that he had a quiet chat with Lily, and if he failed to stop her addiction, to inform her parents and take her to the nearest psychology centre.  
  
"Pika Pika Shuichi!!!!"  
  
Shuichi shot out of his seat and hit the roof. His head disappeared though the plaster for a few minutes, and after some kicking and wiggling, he fell back down, landing in his seat.  
  
"Ah, Shuichi is so cool!" Ryuichi squealed with an expression of radiant joy. "Kumagoro was so happy to see something so amazing!" He then had the rabbit's paws do a clapping motion.  
  
Shuichi rubbed his aching head with bits of plaster flaking out of his hair. Maybe Yuki was right and he should book himself in for a CAT scan, he did hit his head a lot.  
  
"Oh hello Sakuma san," he said brightly as the toy continued to applaud.  
  
Shuichi had seen Ryuichi thousands of times in his life. On the posters that had covered his bedroom walls as a kid, on all his Nittle Grasper videos, countless times on the television and nearly every second day since he had become a professional. But for the first time ever Shuichi looked at the rock legend from a different angle.  
  
It seemed that the hair was really the only big common trait that the two shared. They both had blue eyes, but Lily's were far darker than her father's. The two also had different face shapes, Lily had higher cheekbones than Ryuichi and even though Shuichi had never seen Lily's mother, it was easy to see that it was her she took after.  
  
"Do I have something on my face?" Ryuichi asked curiously and prodded himself in the cheek with his ringed finger.  
  
"No, no!" Shuichi said quickly waving his hands. "I was just thinking that you don't look much like Lily chan."  
  
Shuichi slapped himself on the forehead, astounded that he'd let that slip. K had told him not to bring the subject of Ryuichi up in front of Lily, so he assumed that vice versa went while around Ryuichi. He could already feel the bullet in his skin.  
  
"I guess not na no da," Ryuichi said casually scratching his head. "She always did remind me more of Christina."  
  
"Christina?" Shuichi asked remembering what K had told him too late.  
  
"Yea!" Ryuichi said, his face lighting up like someone had flicked a switch. "She was my wife-well sort of anyway."  
  
Now Shuichi was completely lost (not that's it was hard to do). He had assumed that since Ryuichi had never spoken about his daughter or his deceased partner, the topic was off limits. However, much to his surprise, Ryuichi seemed overjoyed that he was asking questions.  
  
Ryuichi jumped into the seat next to Shuichi and sat Kumagoro up on the table, the weight of the rabbit's head making it droop like a dying flower.  
  
"She had long blonde hair, dark blue eyes and was this tall," Ryuichi raised his hand to indicate the woman's height, "and was pretty and really, really nice!" He then stuck his face uncomfortably close to Shuichi's. "Do you wanna see a picture?"  
  
Still dumbfounded, Shuichi nodded and lent back on his chair. Ryuichi reached into his black denim jacket and pulled out a photograph. Making sure not to get any fingerprints on it, he placed the picture carefully on the table.  
  
Shuichi was reminded of his teenage years just by looking at it. Ryuichi looked just as he did in the photograph as he had on all of his late eighty's posters and early albums. His hair was just as long and the same smile of delight was plastered on his face. The only differences were that he was a tad thinner and he had a few less earrings. Also, although it wasn't something that you would take a lot of notice of, there was something about the eyes that struck Shuichi. In the photo they seemed brighter somehow, like Ryuichi didn't have a care in the world.  
  
In the photo Ryuichi was standing on a beach proudly flashing the Victory symbol with his fingers. On his back he was carrying a young woman with blonde hair that reached her hips, sapphire eyes with a smile to match her lover's.  
  
'Lily,' he thought as he looked at the aged photograph. It was a little yellow around the sides and a bit of the colour had faded, but there wasn't a tear or crease to be seen. Shuichi then thought of something.  
  
"Sakuma san?"  
  
"Yes?"  
  
"How old where you when this photo was taken?"  
  
Ryuichi held up one hand and counted back on his fingers, muttering to himself. After what seemed like an age, he spoke.  
  
"Eighteen."  
  
It was like Shuichi had been struck by lightning. He leapt up out of his seat and recoiled in horror, his expression full of amazement.  
  
"Eight-eighteen!" he squeaked with his trembling fingers in his mouth.  
  
Ryuichi watched with great curiosity as the twenty-year-old had a panic spasm on the floor with his head tilted to one side. It was like watching a bug that had fallen on its back with its legs waving around in the air.  
  
Like a small child his short attention span gave out after a few minutes so he carefully picked the photo up and slipped it back into his jacket. He never went anywhere without it.  
  
He was about to leave when Shuichi finished. "Sakuma san!"  
  
"Mm?"  
  
"Does that mean you had Lily chan at eighteen?"  
  
"No, no, don't be silly Shuichi," Ryuichi said scooping Kumagoro into his arms and standing up.  
  
Shuichi relaxed with a great sigh of relief. Knowing that Ryuichi had found his one and only at eighteen was electrifying enough, but to have heard that he'd been a young father would have had terrible result on the young singer. After all, it's not everyday you hear amazing things about someone you thought you knew everything about.  
  
"Lily was born two months after my nineteenth birthday."  
  
"Nine-nine-nin-teeeeeen." Shuichi's world spun and he passed out.  
  
"Oh looky, looky Kumagoro, that's what I did when Christina said she had a baby inside her!"  
  
***********************************************  
  
"I love you," Lily said for what must have been the tenth time that afternoon.  
  
"I'm quite fond of you too," Joan said simply and took another swing of orange Fanta.  
  
There was an hour to go before the school day finished and the junior high maths class was breaking just about every rule in the book. Due to the unforseen absence of Yamagata sensei, the double had been christened as free study time with the vice-principal making random visits every now and again. And if you can think of what things were like for you at school, you'd remember what "free study period" translates to. Bludge!  
  
The students had put their desks together to form large tables so that gossip rings could sit around. Some boys smoking in the back corner were huddled around a roulette wheel made from an old car tyre and a group of girls were dancing while a CD played.  
  
"Not that I really care, but what happened to Yamagata sensei?" Lily asked nibbling on a banana-choc pocky stick.  
  
"Oh he suddenly decided to take a time out after I had a bit of a look at his e-mails and found something that nobody else knows about," Joan replied with a wink.  
  
"You mean you hacked into his e-mail account and found something to blackmail him with?"  
  
"Well if you're going to go and make it sound illegal," Joan said rolling her eyes behind her huge frames. "Anyway, I found some rather raunchy e- mails from the principal's wife."  
  
"You what!?" the pocky stick fell from Lily's mouth and she paled at the thought of the principal's wife and Yamagata sensei together.  
  
"Stop interrupting," Joan said in an annoyed tone and Lily kept quiet. "So after I found that rather damning evidence, I got ready to forward it, found Yamagata sensei and told him that if he didn't want every member of the student body to know about how he'd been a naughty little boy, he should consider taking the afternoon off. Ergo, you now have time to do those math exercises. Who da Queen?"  
  
"You da Queen!" Lily cried beaming and slapped hands with Joan.  
  
The two exchange students had pushed their desks together and were making their way though a large selection of artery clogging food. Chips, pocky, jelly lollies, a slab of orange Fanta and a box of chocolates, all from Joan's secret stash in her locker. They each had one earphone in and the Beetles played on Joan's discman.  
  
Times like this reminded Lily why she bothered.  
  
"She's coming!" one of the roulette boys cried.  
  
There was a flurry as desks were rearranged, foods jammed back into school bags, cigarettes butted out, the roulette wheel and CD player were stuffed in a vacant locker and random papers and books were put out on desks.  
  
Nothing but silence could be heard as the vice-principal walked past the classroom, peering in through the windows. Every student lifted their heads in perfect sync and flashed dazzling grins at her. She smiled back and everyone kept up the working act until the sound of her high heels had disappeared.  
  
Out came the roulette wheel and CD player, tables and chairs scraped across the floor as they were once again moved and people started to munch on their sweets again.  
  
Joan pushed the open button on her discman and took out her Beatles CD.  
  
"Time for something a bit different," she said and flicked through her CD case.  
  
"Hey Ringo and Paul are the only two Beatles still alive aren't they?" Lily asked as she opened another can of Fanta.  
  
"No, Paul's been dead for years," Joan said with a shrug and selected a CD.  
  
Lily frowned with thought for a few seconds, then lowered her drink. "Wait a second, no, Paul is still alive! It was in a magazine a few weeks ago about how he's having another kid with his second wife."  
  
"That's the fake Paul, the real Paul died in a car crash back in the sixties," Joan said promptly.  
  
"What are you talking about?"  
  
"Well when he died in the car crash, the other three Beatles had a Paul look-alike competition and they had the winner act as Paul until the band broke up. I read it on the Internet." Joan lent back in her chair with her arms folded and gave her friend a superior smile.  
  
Lily looked at her for a very long time. The half drunk Fanta bubbled in her hand, in the corner someone lost 1000 yen and the rain pelting on the windows grew heavier.  
  
"That has to be the stupidest thing that I have ever heard."  
  
"What? You think it was one big lie?" Joan asked looking shocked.  
  
"Yes, yes I do indeed," Lily said with a sigh and drank some more Fanta.  
  
"Oh well, silly me," Joan laughed not looking the least bit embarrassed and put a CD in the discman.  
  
"What are you putting on?" Lily asked.  
  
"The Nittle Grasper album my brother gave to me when he moved back to England. It's one of their early ones, but it still kicks arse," Joan said closing the lid.  
  
"Nittle Grasper?" Lily thought for a minute before a memory rekindled in her mind. "Oh yea! Shuichi really likes them."  
  
"Really?" Joan scrunched up her nose and thought. "According to the charts, their Bad Luck's biggest rival." She hit the Play button.  
  
"This first song is the one that got them their big break and made music history. It's called Sleepless Beauty."  
  
The music started.  
  
************************************************  
  
The leather chair creaked as Tohma lent back in it heavily. Despite what Lily said, he really did feel old.  
  
He'd just finished an on-line meeting with the London and American N-G offices, and the news hadn't been so great. He'd left the London office to handle things for themselves a few months back, but it was clear now that they had really screwed themselves sideways.  
  
Also, he had promised Mika to go on vacation in Europe with her months ago, and he'd only remembered that morning when the airline had called to confirm their booking for Friday.  
  
And just to add some more stress to his life, Eiri hadn't replied to any of his messages all week. That man was so stubborn.  
  
Tohma sighed and threw his hat on the desk so he could run his hand through his hair. Now he had to choose between a business collapse and an angry wife. His business instinct told him to fix N-G in England. His will to live told him to pick a week in Europe.  
  
That's when it clicked.  
  
He could extend the vacation by a week and make a stopover in England. He could set London N-G back on track while Mika went shopping or sightseeing. He'd heard that London had a torture chamber museum and that sounded right up her ally.  
  
Astonished by this own brilliance he was about to call the airline back when he remembered.  
  
Lily.  
  
Tohma sagged back down and thought for a minute. Who could he get to babysit for two weeks? Noriko was off visiting her sister in Aomori for a week, and Ryuichi.well that just wasn't possible yet.  
  
Then he thought of something. Who was that weirdo friend that ran Lily non- stop on her mobile to ask stupid things like where her left shoe was? Jan? Jenny? Jill? Jess? Joan?  
  
Yes, that was right, it was Joan. Lily could arrange to stay with her for two weeks. After all, Lily was used to looking after herself.  
  
************************************************ "La li ho! Lily! Lily! Lily! Hey Lily chan over here!"  
  
Lily lifted her heavy head the table and looked up. Shuichi was waving at her from the end of the hall with Hiro, heading over to the tables she was sitting at.  
  
"Oh hey," she croaked, her face worn with dark bags under her eyes.  
  
"I missed you yesterday," Shuichi pouted. "Where were you?"  
  
"Oh I just had something on my mind, and I was tired," she explained. She hoped that they wouldn't ask about the first bit of that answer.  
  
"You look terrible," Hiro slipped out before he could think of anything more eloquent.  
  
"It's the drugs I'm telling you!" Shuichi hissed, his hand raised to hide his moving lips. Hiro rolled his eyes but didn't say anything. There was no point trying to convince his friend otherwise, he would just have to suffer the burn of embarrassment.  
  
"Well that's pretty much how I feel," Lily sighed running her hand through her thick brown hair.  
  
"Are you waiting for Seguchi san?" the guitarist asked before Shuichi could say something stupid about cannabis or needles.  
  
"No, no," she said waving her hand to dismiss the question. "He and Mika san have gone to Europe for two weeks. Joan said she'd pick me up from here after her anime club meeting."  
  
"Well we were just about to go and grab something to eat since we've finished for the day," Shuichi said slowly, as a plan formed in his mind.  
  
"We were?" Hiro asked looking a bit dazzled but didn't say anything else after an elbow in the ribs.  
  
Shuichi's master plan was that maybe he could confront Lily about her drug addiction if he wasn't in the same building as his trigger-happy manager. "Why don't you come and have a bite to eat before Joan gets here?"  
  
Lily had no appetite whatsoever, but the idea of going to a café with Heart Throb Hiro got her to her feet and out the door. She followed the two musicians through the rain to a small café a few blocks away at a very slow pace. Her body ached way more than it should for doing such a menial task.  
  
Shuichi pushed the glass door open when Greensleeves started to shriek loudly from Lily's pocket.  
  
"Sorry," she said pushing her hand into her pocket. "Go ahead and I'll be along in a minute."  
  
She flicked the top open and the door closed. The Hiragana on the phone screen read "Joan."  
  
"Hey what's up?" Lily asked listlessly as she held the small machine to her ear.  
  
"So sorry," Joan panted on the other end of the line. "Grandma took a fall so we all need to go see her."  
  
"Where does she live?" Lily asked feeling a bit worried. She knew for a fact that a fall for a fossil could be rather serious.  
  
"Manchester," Joan said in great haste. "Our plane leaves in five, so sorry, I don't mean to diss you but we can't baby sit. Love to stay and chat but I gotta go. See ya!"  
  
The phone went dead in Lily's hand and she slowly moved it away from her ear. It looked like she'd be at Tohma's place all alone for two weeks.  
  
'Oh well, it's not like the feeling is unfamiliar.'  
  
She pushed the door open and walked over to were her seniors were sitting. She slipped into the booth across from the two friends and tried to focus her mind on other things. It wasn't Joan's fault that she had to go to England, but still, she couldn't help but feel upset.  
  
"Everything ok?" Hiro asked cheerfully.  
  
It could have been what he said, or it could have been how he said it. Perhaps it was his expression of bliss that did it. But whatever it was, it did it.  
  
Lily's fingers clutched the blue denim on her legs and her fringe fell over her face as she stared down at her feet. A burning sensation played on her vocal cords and her nose began to run. Neither of them clicked to what was happening until the first tear slid down her face and tumbled through the air, landing with a splash on her clenched hand.  
  
"Lily chan is something wrong?" Shuichi asked as he lent back into the vinyl booth with surprise.  
  
"Have you ever, you ever, felt as though," she couldn't finish the sentence but her voice broke into a sob and more tears formed a cascade of helplessness.  
  
"I'm sorry, I just," she tried to talk but she couldn't think of what to say as she tried to wipe the tears from her face. Shuichi got up from beside Hiro hastily and sat himself next to her.  
  
"Lily chan," he murmured and pulled her into a hug, resting his cheek on her hair.  
  
Lily didn't know what to do. Sure, Shuichi had hugged her before, but that had just been to burn off energy. The sympathy and comfort he was giving her by the embrace was something different. Something that she'd never been given by anyone, ever.  
  
"It'll be all right Lily chan. It's all going to be ok," Shuichi said soothingly as he rubbed her back.  
  
"No, no it wont," she sobbed into his jacket. "I try, and I try, but I can't remember. I don't remember anything!"  
  
She continued to soak Shuichi with salty tears as he held her. He threw Hiro a questioning look, but all Hiro could do was shrug.  
  
"It must really hurt," Shuichi assumed, for he had never felt the pain of not knowing who you are.  
  
"The only things that I can remember are just so ah!" her voice broke up into a gasp of pain and she pushed away from Shuichi's warmth and comfort.  
  
High pitched gasps brought the attention of the other people dining. Lily tried to breathe in but the oxygen particles didn't make it into her lungs so it all came back out as loud wheezes.  
  
"Lily chan what's wrong?" Shuichi asked fearfully as he held her shoulders.  
  
"I-need-my-puff-puffer!" she gasped and started to cough violently.  
  
Things flew around in Shuichi's head at one hundred miles an hour. It was clear that Lily was in some kind of pain, but he couldn't think of how to help her. He was reminded when he found her outside N-G in the rain, but that didn't help any. It was Seguchi who had known what to do, not him. And what the Hell was a puffer?  
  
"My-bag!" she gasped waving frantically at the backpack on the floor, her wheezing getting louder.  
  
A wheel moved in Hiro's mind and he grabbed the backpack, scourging through it like a rodent. He opened every zip with things falling out constantly until he found it in the front pocket.  
  
He thrust the Ventolin into her hands and she wasted not time pushing the top and breathing in the medicine.  
  
Bit by bit, the noise coming from her quietened and she slowly started to get back into a regular rhythm of breathing. She held the blue object in her hand and let her head fall on Shuichi's shoulder.  
  
"I'm all right now," she whispered as she breathed deeply. "I just have to rest for a minute.  
  
Relief washed over the two adults and for the first time ever, Hiro was glad that his parents had made him study to become a doctor back in High School. Glancing around, he noticed that the diner had come to a standstill due to their little display.  
  
Noticing that they'd been sprung, the curious onlookers turned away and went back about their business.  
  
"I think we should personally escort you to Joan's place," Hiro said as he turned back to his friends. "We don't want you to have another attack when you're alone."  
  
Shuichi stopped brushing the brown hair from her sweaty face and looked at Hiro with confusion.  
  
"Attack? What kind of attack?"  
  
"An asthma attack," he explained brushing some reddish hair back over his shoulder. "It's a disease in the lungs that causes problems for the breathing of the patient."  
  
All Hiro needed was a white coat and a clipboard and he could con anyone into believing that he had a three year medical degree.  
  
"That's right," Lily said, sitting back up again slowly with a wince. "It's been keeping me up coughing all night lately."  
  
Shuichi felt really, really stupid. Lily wasn't taking drugs, she had a lung disease. Why was it that Hiro was always right?  
  
"Anyway, Joan had to go to Manchester, so I have to go back to Tohma's," Lily said and took a sip of water from Shuichi's glass, taking care to drink slowly.  
  
"What, so you mean you're going to be alone in the house for two weeks?" Shuichi asked, looking quite alarmed.  
  
"Don't worry," Lily said forcing a weak smile. "I'm all alone anyway."  
  
************************************************  
  
"You've either got nerves of steel or just no brains," Hiro sighed as the three stood outside the diner, the heavy rain clouds covering the stars like a dark blanket.  
  
"Well we don't really have much choice in the matter do we?" Shuichi said with a smile and a shrug. He then turned to Lily with a smile and crouched down. "Come on Lily chan, hop on."  
  
"What?" she asked coming out of a daze. Her face was all warm and red from crying and the asthma attack had sucked her dry of energy.  
  
Hiro walked up behind her, and placing his hands under her arms, lifted her up and propped her on Shuichi's back.  
  
"Hey I can still walk you know!" is said indigently as Shuichi straightened up and held onto her tightly.  
  
"Don't worry Lily chan," Shuichi said in a sugar sweet voice. "You're very tired so I'll do all the walking for you. Besides, you're as light as a feather."  
  
A pink tinge formed above her nose and she linked her hands around his neck for extra support.  
  
"You'd best get her indoors quickly," Hiro muttered to Shuichi. "By the look of her she could really do with a hot bath and a sleep."  
  
"Don't worry, I'll take good care of her!" Shuichi proclaimed brightly.  
  
"I actually think it's going to be a case of vice versa," Hiro said with a sigh and put his hands on his hips. "But that's not what I'm really worried about, if you catch my drift."  
  
"Don't worry Hiro!" Shuichi cried cheerfully, amused by his friend's concern. "I'm sure that Yuki loves kids, and me!"  
  
************************************************ Disclaimer: I don't own Gravitation or any of the characters. Credit to Maki Murakami. The song "Paperback Writer" was written by the Beatles, all right reserved. Cheers for all the reviews guys! 


	10. Chapter Ten

"I hate children, and you irritate the crap out of me," Yuki Eiri said harshly as he butted his cigarette out in the ashtray beside the couch with a great deal of force.  
  
After typing all day to meet his upcoming deadline, he'd decided to kick back after a shower and have a few beers while watching the news. His rare piece of relaxation had been interrupted though when five minutes ago Shuichi had arrived home and completely out of the blue, had begged him to allow Sakuma Whatshisface's brat to stay with them while Tohma was off gallivanting over Europe.  
  
Yuki had always considered Shuichi to be stupid, but this one really took the cake. How the stupid notion of looking after a brat for two weeks had gotten into his pink head he'd never know, and to be perfectly honest, he didn't really care to find out.  
  
"Please, please Yuki!" Shuichi begged from the floor as Yuki looked very disinterested. "It's just for two weeks, and she's really mature for her age! You won't even notice that she's here!"  
  
The wet towel that had been hanging around the novelist's neck smacked Shuichi in the face to stop him from saying anything further.  
  
"Listen you idiot," Yuki said with his arms crossed. "Do you have any idea what teenage girls are like? They're hormone time bombs just waiting to explode. Putting up with one child-namely you-is my maximum limit. And where'd this feeling of obligation suddenly come from huh? Do you feel like you owe that Sakuma guy a favour because what he's done for you in the past?"  
  
"That's not true!" Shuichi snapped pulling the towel off his head. "She's my friend and I don't want her to be on her own while she's ill!"  
  
"Oh, right, you'd feel guilty if she kicked the bucket?"  
  
"No!"  
  
Shuichi sagged in defeat. He'd known that convincing Yuki wouldn't be easy, but he'd thought that he'd be at least reasonable when he said that Lily was sick. It seemed that the icicle just didn't want to thaw out.  
  
Deciding that the debate had been settled, Yuki lit up another cigarette and focused his attention once more on the newsreader. Shuichi would have to think, and fast if he was going to get Lily in.  
  
"Hey."  
  
"Hey what?" Yuki asked blowing out some smoke without looking at him.  
  
"What if, for you to let her stay," Shuichi gulped loudly. "I'll do anything you want in there," he pointed in the direction of the bedroom, "whenever you want."  
  
Yuki let his cigarette rest on the side of the ashtray and with his right hand, grabbed Shuichi by the chin. His yellow eyes bore into the singer's soul, and Shuichi could smell traces of tobacco on his breath. Their eyes locked for a very long time.  
  
"Just think about what you just said," Yuki whispered in a dangerous tone, "and just think about what it means."  
  
Shuichi gulped and felt sick in the stomach. Maybe the bribe wasn't such a good idea, maybe he should think of something else to promise. But he knew deep down that the promise of being 100% willing would be the only thing that could possibly swing Yuki.  
  
Yuki pulled his face towards him and kissed him on the lips. Shuichi was surprised but didn't struggle or show any sign of discomfort. When Yuki broke away, Shuichi sagged back onto the floor and took a deep breath.  
  
The novelist sat back into the couch and ran a hand through his short blonde hair. He said nothing for a few minutes, but then looked back at Shuichi with a blank expression.  
  
"She can stay, but if she's any trouble, she's out," he said and turned his attention back to the TV.  
  
"Yay!" he leapt up to hug but Yuki kicked him back down with his foot.  
  
"Save your energy, you'll need it," he said with a dirty smirk as Shuichi lay sprawled out on the floor. "Well just don't sit there, invite her in idiot."  
  
"Oh right!" he said and scurried off the floor and to the door. He opened it and stepped out into the hall.  
  
Yuki didn't bother to look over as Lily came through the door with Shuichi's hand resting on her shoulder out of concern. She was completely exhausted but she still looked around the dimly lit apartment and noted that whoever decorated it sure had good taste, meaning that it hadn't been Shuichi.  
  
"Lily chan," Shuichi said softly squeezing her shoulder, "I'd like you to meet Yuki."  
  
Lily pulled her eyes away from the abstract painting hanging on the wall and peered into the shadows as she tried to get a better look at the man sitting on the couch, the light from the television lighting up his face. Yuki turned his head and looked back at her.  
  
The pair of them nearly gave Shuichi a heart attack.  
  
**********************************************  
  
9 years ago  
  
"Daddy has to go away to work for a while," Ryuichi said kneeling as he rubbed Lily's hair as she hugged Kumagoro.  
  
The airport was filled with people rushing everywhere, but he was oblivious to them. The only thing he was focusing on was the four year old standing before him. He didn't want to leave her with her grandmother since he was fully aware how horrible she was, but he had to go.  
  
Sleepless Beauty had topped the charts in ten different countries, and Tohma said that they had best continue working in Japan, were they would have the most amount of fans and could make an album.  
  
Lily sniffed as she tried to hold back the tears and Ryuichi took her into his arms. Looking up he saw Christina's mother, dressed in the most expensive clothes on the market looking down on the two of them as if they were the dirt on her shoes.  
  
"You'll remember that if she finds it hard to breathe to give her a puff of Ventolin right?" he asked with an equal amount of dislike in his eyes.  
  
"Don't talk to me like your inferior you good for nothing ruffian. You brought this situation upon yourself by the sinful actions of the two of you," she snarled as she ran her fingers over the string of pearls that hung around her neck.  
  
"I would hardly call bringing a beautiful little girl into the world by two people in love a sin," Ryuichi said with a raised eyebrow, trying hard not to loose his temper in front of Lily. Things were going to be hard enough on her without having to see him wring the withered bat's neck.  
  
"Ryu chan, we have to go now," Noriko said behind him in Japanese. "Don't worry about Lily, she will be all right."  
  
Ryuichi turned his head and nodded. It pained him to let Lily slip from his embrace, she was all he had left, and he had to leave her with a family who had no love her what so ever.  
  
"Goodbye Daddy," she said in her small voice and held Kumagoro up as far as she could. "Take Kumagoro with you, so every time you hug him it will be a hug for me."  
  
Ryuichi was surprised that such a small child could say something so mature, but he didn't have time to brewed over it, the longer he stayed with her the harder it would be to leave. He took the soft rabbit gently in his hands and smiled, not being true to his feelings.  
  
"Goodbye Lily, Daddy will be back for you. Just as soon as Uncle Tohma sorts some work out ok?"  
  
"Bye bye Daddy," she said and he joined his band in boarding the plane. He was nearly out of sight when he heard her call again.  
  
"Bye Daddy! I love you!"  
  
Ryuichi froze in his step, unsure of whether to go forward or back. Tohma placed his hand on his arm and whispered in his ear.  
  
"Don't look back Ryuichi. Everything that you are doing is for her, remember that. If you stay and don't take this chance, you will have nothing to give her."  
  
Ryuichi nodded and continued to walk forward, not looking at anyone as he made his way down the tunnel and into the plane.  
  
Lily ran over to the window and climbed up on the blue chair so she could stand up and see the plane. She wasn't paying any attention to the old woman talking behind her.  
  
"Right mess they've all left me in now. First my foolish daughter gets those stupid notions in her head and picks up with that slacker and then my husband leaves a huge mess by making that damned will. Now I'm stuck here looking after a kid that's probably just going to die anyway!"  
  
Noticing that the toddler wasn't taking the least bit of attention made her fume with anger.  
  
"Are you listening child?" she demanded as Lily pressed herself up against the glass to watch the jet make its way down the runway.  
  
Her grandmother grabbed her tightly by her small arm and pulled her around to face her. Lily felt fear and pain rise in her chest and winced as the manicured nails dug into her soft skin.  
  
"Aren't you listening to me child?" the woman screamed in her face. "He's not coming back for you! You are alone in the world!"  
  
Somewhere above the clouds with a child's toy sitting in his lap, a young man cried.  
  
**********************************************  
  
Now  
  
"Shuichi can I talk to you about your poems?" Lily asked cautiously as she put her glue-stick down.  
  
Her and Shuichi were sitting on floor cushions on opposite sides of the coffee table with scattered papers and stationary covering it. It was a rainy Saturday afternoon so the two had decided to stay in the apartment doing quiet tasks while Yuki was glued to his computer screen.  
  
Shuichi was working fruitlessly on his song for the upcoming performance, while Lily was doing the school assignment she'd put off doing for about a week. Her family tree. The very thought of it made her retch.  
  
"Well when I said that maybe you should try to get some inspiration from poetry, this wasn't what I really meant," she said collecting a few scattered papers.  
  
"Do you think that there's something wrong with them?" Shuichi asked, getting defensive.  
  
"Well," Lily saw his body stiffen and changed what she was about to say. "How about I read them back to you and you tell me what you think ok?"  
  
Shuichi nodded and much to Lily's relief, his regular well-meaning smile reappeared. She cleared her throat and read aloud the first Haiku.  
  
It's raining again  
It pisses me off a lot  
I can't go outside  
  
"I wrote that one about us!" Shuichi cried with a huge grin. "Don't you just hate this rainy weather? We can't go out and play!"  
  
"Uh-huh," Lily said slowly and shuffled the poem to the back of the papers in her hand and read out the second one.  
  
The thunder is loud  
It scares the shit out of me  
Quick run away now  
  
Several famous Japanese poets rolled over in their graves.  
  
"You have a fear of thunder?" Lily asked trying not to laugh at the stupidity of it all.  
  
"Yep, I cling to Yuki every time there's a storm," Shuichi wrinkled his brow in thought. "I don't think he likes it when I do it though."  
  
'Can't begin to imagine why,' Lily thought sarcastically and read off the final piece of paper.  
  
The blue Sai river  
Full of ducks and water skis  
Watch the boats go by  
  
Out of all three, this one was the most stupid.  
  
"I didn't know they let water skiers down the Sai River," Lily said pulling a funny face.  
  
"In my mind they do," Shuichi said with folded arms and a smile.  
  
"Ok then, ahh!" she squealed as a hand reached down in front of her and pulled the papers out of her hand. Twirling around on her cushion she could see Yuki standing above her. Neither of them had heard him come out of his study.  
  
He looked at the poems with an expression of utter disgust as a cigarette burned away in his mouth. He pulled a metal object out of his pants pocket and with a flick of the thumb, heartlessly set the Haikus on fire.  
  
Shuichi screamed like a little girl as the flames engulfed the shocking poetry, but Yuki ignored him completely and walked over to the couch so he could use the ashtray.  
  
"That was rather heartless," Lily said staring at the ashes on the floor as Shuichi howled.  
  
"I don't recall saying I was a nice person," Yuki said in a monotone voice and turned to face her. "By the way, thanks to our unexpected reunion last night, I didn't get time to get the ground rules down." He flopped down on the couch and lit up a new cigarette. Talk about a chain smoker. Lily looked up at him not feeling the least bit intimidated.  
  
"No noise, no visitors, no phone calls, don't touch anything, don't go in my study, or in my bedroom for that matter and curfew is at 10 p.m. Is that clear?"  
  
"Like a window," Lily said with a shrug and then winced. Shuichi was too busy crying in a ball too see, but Yuki didn't miss it. However, he wasn't one to let on.  
  
She got to her feet and made her way to the door. There she slipped on her shoes and pulled a jumper out of her backpack.  
  
"Where are you going?" Shuichi asked with a sniff as he turned the waterworks off.  
  
"Just down the street to get some stuff for dinner," she said with a smile and left the apartment.  
  
"So she cooks," Yuki said thoughtfully and flicked some ash into the tray. "If she cleans too this might not turn out so badly after all."  
  
"Yuki!" Shuichi whined in a high pitched tone and shuffled over to the couch. "Don't take advantage of her!"  
  
"Oh she's not the one I'm going to take advantage of," he reassured him and pulled Shuichi's t-shirt up.  
  
**********************************************  
  
5 years ago  
  
Lily burst through the bushes at top speed, her lungs burning more intensely than lighter fluid. She looked around the paddock for a few fleeting seconds before heading for the oak tree that stood in the middle. The grazing cows didn't acknowledge her at all as she wove through the heard and hoisted herself up into the hundred year old tree. She climbed up quickly and sat on a firm branch while holding onto the trunk for extra balance.  
  
She reached into the pocket of her windcheater slowly while still holding onto the trunk with one arm, afraid that she would fall if she moved too much.  
  
The Ventolin gave little relief, but if she'd kept running she would have been in serious trouble.  
  
A cow lifted its head lazily as a crashing sound came out of the bush. Two boys, both wearing silk shirts and leather pants (so expensive that it made the cows jealous) came out of the undergrowth and started dusting twigs and pollen off of them.  
  
Meet Lily's cousins, Azrael and Balthasar. Fancy names and fancy clothes, but the pair of them didn't have a brain cell between them.  
  
"Oh just look at my hair!" Balthasar squealed examining his hair in a hand held mirror as he ran a comb through it. It wasn't possible to meet a snootier eight year old.  
  
Lily coughed, making her lungs ache even more, and the two boys lifted their heads. They saw her siting on the branch with her legs swinging back and forth and ran towards the tree.  
  
When they reached the bottom of the tree they both looked up for a minute before Azrael punched his brother in the arm.  
  
"Well just don't stand there idiot!" the ten year old snapped. "Climb up there and get her!"  
  
"You want me to climb up there?" Balthasar asked with a laugh, and then stopped when he realized that Azrael was serious. "You know I don't lift or climb. Do you have any idea how many nails that would break?"  
  
"Just get up there!" Azrael yelled and thumped his younger brother over the head.  
  
"Oh, this is going to be so expensive!" he whined and stared to climb up the oak tree in a most awkward way.  
  
"What did I do wrong?" Lily asked as she as Balthasar clung to the trunk, "can't we just be friends?"  
  
"Shut up you little bastard!" Azrael yelled from the ground. "You broke our ball, so now you're going to pay!"  
  
"The dog bit it!" Lily tried to explain looking hurt. "I saw him bite it and I picked it up and.."  
  
"Oh just shut up! You're always causing problems for our family," Azrael snapped, mimicking their grandmother. He bent down and scooped up a large rock from the ground.  
  
Balthasar, who was totally inexperienced in the art of tree climbing fell to the ground with a thud when he was no more than half a meter up the tree.  
  
"You're useless!" Azrael screamed at his brother and threw the rock up into the tree.  
  
It hit Lily in the shoulder, causing her to sway for a few seconds before falling with a scream. The winded howled around the eight year old for a few seconds before she hit the ground. A jagged rock hit her side and there was a crack.  
  
Both boys stood in shock, although Azrael had meant to hit her, he hadn't really expected her to fall.  
  
There was no scream of pain, put they could hear high pitched gasps coming from her small body. And they watched horrified, as blood poured from her mouth.  
  
**********************************************  
  
A scream pierced the air as a car slammed on the brakes and skidded along the road. A woman with long hair looked at it fearfully for half a second before it hit her. She flew over the bonnet and rolled over the roof before crashing onto the road, a stream of blood flying through the air.  
  
A man screamed her name and ran out onto the road. People everywhere were screaming and watching from the pavement as the man scooped the woman into his arms.  
  
The child left standing on the pavement looked on in horror, too young to understand what had happened. Suddenly she understood and her chest seized up as her lungs stopped moving.  
  
The woman had gone limp in the man's arms and he turned to look back at the child. His face was...  
  
Lily sat up at an amazingly fast rate throwing the blanket off of her. The apartment was completely dark and all was quiet except for the noise coming from her. She was wheezing terribly and grabbing at the pile of clothes that lay in a heap beside the couch, found the Ventolin in her jeans pocket and took a few puffs.  
  
She'd had that dream again, not that it was really a dream; it was more of a memory she'd tried to erase but hadn't been able to do. Although it make the scar in her soul deeper every time, it was one of the only things she could remember about her parents.  
  
She repeated the medication dose several times, but although the wheezing had gone, her chest still felt tight and ached like crazy.  
  
Lily had her eyes squeezed shut and her fist clutched a handful of t-shirt material, but the pain still refused to leave. She took a few more puffs, but still nothing.  
  
'Well then I guess that my asthma isn't the problem here' she thought and with much discomfort, got off of the couch and pulled some clothes over her night gear.  
  
She tiptoed to the door but stopped half way. Breaking curfew while Yuki and Shuichi were asleep would be simple enough, getting back in was the problem. She didn't have a key and the door locked automatically when it closed.  
  
The apartment was on the sixth floor, so jumping out the window as out unless she wanted to become sidewalk pancake.  
  
That only left one option. If you don't have your own key, take someone else's.  
  
Lily silently walked into the kitchen, and deciding that it would be too risky to turn the light on, opened the fringe, the automatic light throwing shadows around the room.  
  
She looked under some papers, on the kitchen bench and on top of the fridge. Of course, she found them in the most obvious place, on the key rack.  
  
Yuki had his car keys hanging on one of the hooks, so taking caution not to make even the slightest jingle, she carefully took them off and pulled the apartment key off.  
  
Lily closed the fridge and tiptoed back to the front door where she put her shoes back on and grabbed her backpack. She stood for a few more minutes to listen for any movement, and when she heard none, closed the door quietly.  
  
She took an elevator to the bottom floor and left the building. The cold air was like a smack in the face, and much to her surprise, there was a thin layer of snow on the ground. It had started to snow briefly while she'd been sleeping, but it was mostly slosh since it still wasn't cold enough for snowman quality snow.  
  
Lily walked up a few blocks and sat herself down at the bus stop. According to the timetable she needed to catch bus number 48 to get to where she was going. She lent back against the seat and let out a large sigh.  
  
'I truly am pathetic.'  
  
**********************************************  
  
13 years ago  
  
Christina eyed the line of ants making their way up the wall of her apartment with a great deal of dislike. She'd tried to kill the little buggers by using about a dozen different chemicals and poisons, but still they taunted her.  
  
Her apartment was an utter hole that was infested with every type of insect and rodent imaginable, but she hadn't been able to afford to get a better place. Now that she had cut herself off from her family and was currently out of work, she'd been relying heavily on Ryuichi's tiny bank account.  
  
She let her head flop back on the pillows and decided not to worry about the six-legged nuisances for now. It was too much effort to look up over her enormous stomach and to be perfectly honest, it was too bloody hot.  
  
It was one of the hottest spring nights ever recorded and the apartment didn't have any type of cooling system.  
  
'Perhaps I could throw a whole heap of ice on the bed then lay on it,' Christina thought for a second before slapping her forehead. Now she was getting as ditzy as her boyfriend was.  
  
She heard the front door open and she reached for the baseball bat beside the bed. Any thief should think twice about robbing a heavily pregnant woman with a baseball bat and the medical knowledge to give you internal bleeding with the least amount of swings.  
  
Ryuichi staggered into the bedroom with huge black rings under his eyes. He slipped his shirt off, dumping it on the floor and collapsed on the bed face down, making the springs groan loudly.  
  
"You looked stuffed," Christina stated the obvious and put the bat down. She climbed back on the bed and rubbed the back of Ryuichi's neck as he kicked his shoes off.  
  
"Long day?" she asked with a smile.  
  
"Mmmmmm," was the muffled reply.  
  
"Ah well, just keep thinking of when you're going to be rich and famous," she said soothingly and Ryuichi rolled over.  
  
He smiled at his girlfriend for a minute before moving closer to wrap his arm over her swollen stomach.  
  
"She'll be here soon," he croaked with his dried throat and placed his ear on where the baby slept.  
  
"Why do you keep on saying 'she' Ryuichi?" Christina asked and ran her fingers through his brown, untamed hair. "You don't even know if it's going to be a boy or girl yet."  
  
"It'll be a girl," he said simply as he rubbed Christina's stomach. "You just wait and see."  
  
"You are going to be so cut if it's a boy."  
  
"I so wont be because I so know that it's so going to be a girl," Ryuichi replied with a grin.  
  
"You wouldn't be teasing me know would you Sakuma Ryuichi?" Christina asked with a sneaky smile while pulling gently on a handful of brown hair.  
  
"Me? Tease you babe? Never!" Ryuichi said with a grin, taking delight in his teasing.  
  
He was utterly exhausted from singing all day in that little two by four recording room with moulding carpets, and he really needed to take a shower, but he'd waited all day to be with Christina and the kid that was soon to come.  
  
"Hey Ryuichi," Christina said quietly, still playing with his hair.  
  
"Yea?" he asked without lifting his head.  
  
"Do you remember when you first found out I was pregnant and you passed out?" she asked slowly. Her tone had changed from the regular cheerful to a strange serious.  
  
Ryuichi, noticing the change, sat up and looked Christina in the face.  
  
"Yea just vaguely," he admitted and then displayed a wicked grin. "I remember coning you into believing I needed mouth to mouth and I scored a free kiss."  
  
Christina rapped her knuckles over his skull and her smile returned.  
  
"Yea I remember that too," she said as Ryuichi rubbed his head. "And I also remember that you got up in a real hurry when I suggested that Tohma take over."  
  
Ryuichi shuddered at the memory.  
  
"But anyway," he continued, "why do you ask my love?"  
  
"Did the idea of becoming a dad really terrify you that much?" Christina bit her lip and looked away. "After all, you just turned nineteen two months ago, and we don't have a lot of money, and I'm not the best candidate for motherhood and, and.." She trailed off leaving an awkward silence in the air.  
  
Ryuichi reached up and gently rubbed the side of her pale face with his hand. She turned back to look at him to find a smile spread across his tired face.  
  
"I might not know all there is about bottles and nappies," he admitted, "but all I know is that I love you and her with all my heart, and we'll just figure out the rest as we go."  
  
He then lent over and it was the best kiss that occurred on the scorching night when Christina's water broke.  
  
*********************************************  
  
"Emergency pain killers for Barton Lily please," Lily whispered as she pushed the prescription through the hole in the glass.  
  
The lady behind the counter nodded and turned her back to search the towering shelves for the right pills. Lily took another dose over Ventolin and the lady turned back.  
  
"Do you want another one of those too love?" she asked adjusting her horn- rimmed glasses.  
  
"Could I?" Lily asked looking at the lady like she was an angle of goodness.  
  
"Sure, which one do you need?"  
  
"The strongest you've got please."  
  
The hospital was quiet and the brightness bouncing off of the floor tiles from the overhead lights burned Lily's tired eyes. She was utterly knackered but no doubt the pills would knock her out like a light as soon as she took them.  
  
"Here you go love," she lady said passing Lily a container of pills and a new Ventolin. "I'll just get your file up on screen and you can go."  
  
She typed away on the laptop and spoke again. "When was your last asthma review?"  
  
"Err, I don't really think I need one," Lily lied when she couldn't remember her last review.  
  
"Do you use your puffer more than three times a week?" the lady asked.  
  
"Heck I've used it more than three times this hour," Lily blurted out before she could stop herself.  
  
"Do you spend many nights coughing?"  
  
Lily gave up the lies and started telling the truth. "Yes."  
  
"Do you often feel an shortness of breath?"  
  
"All the time."  
  
"Then it's time for an asthma review," the lady declared and typed some more on the computer. "Dr Sullivan was going to arrange a meeting with you anyway I think. According to this database she just received your records from America the other day."  
  
"That certainly took its time," Lily said with a snort of disgust.  
  
"Honey this is the public health system," the lady said looking up from the computer. "Everything takes its sweet time. Especially the funding."  
  
"True," Lily admitted. She knew what hospital life was like all too well.  
  
"I've got you booked in for Tuesday, is that ok?" the lady asked.  
  
"Yea, Tuesday, right, ok," Lily muttered, too tired to think any more and scooped up her medication. She said her thanks and then left the hospital, being in there too long brought back memories.  
  
She caught the next bus that came past and walked the rest of the way back to the apartment through the sloshy snow.  
  
After a trip in the empty elevator she walked up the hall and as quietly as possible, put the key in the lock and opened the door. She slipped her wet shoes off and took a cautious look around.  
  
The plan was nearly finished; all she had to do was take some pills, put the key back and get some sleep. It was only a few hours before dawn now, but she didn't have to tell Shuichi what she'd been up to, he'd only make a fuss. She was about to go into the kitchen to put the key back when a voice made her jump.  
  
"You're back late. Or should I say early?" 


	11. Chapter Eleven

"You're back late, or should I say early?"  
  
Lily jumped in surprise from the unexpected voice. After all, how many people would be up and talking at four in the morning?  
  
She took a deep breath and looked to where the voice had come from. Yuki's silhouette moved from the balcony door as he reached to turn on a lamp. The light bulb glowed and she could now clearly she him standing dressed shabbily in a pair of pants and a blue shirt that he hadn't bothered to button up. In his hand he rhythmically rotated a can of beer, much like how a lion twitches it's tail before in pounces and mangles an innocent gazelle.  
  
Lily found it hard to find any expression at all on his face. As handsome as Yuki was, Lily couldn't help but think that his features had been carved from stone. In their short time together she hadn't seen him smile or frown once and Shuichi spoke more in ten minutes than Yuki would in two hours.  
  
"Well it looks like curfew has been broken," he stated the obvious and his cat-like eyes flicked to the clock ticking away on the wall. "Or more correctly put, smashed."  
  
Lily said nothing and just kept her mind on breathing steadily. Something flicked across the man's face and for a moment Lily thought her eyes were fooling her.  
  
'Was that a..? Yes'  
  
For a second there had been a smile playing on Yuki's lips, but it wasn't a nice smile. It had been one of amusement and since there wasn't a three- ring circus or Shuichi in the room, that meant there could be only one thing he could be finding hilarious. Her.  
  
"Is there something amusing?" she asked lightly.  
  
"I believe I made myself clear this afternoon," Yuki said completely ignoring her question. "Ten p.m. was the rule, and since you broke it, you must know what it means."  
  
"Yes, I do," Lily whispered in a dry voice. Her face still prickled from the cold outside and her lungs were still burning like the pits of Hell, but she didn't care.  
  
Yuki finished his drink and walked past her to get to the kitchen. Remembering the key that was still in her pocket, she followed his footsteps and put the key on the bench as he rummaged through the fridge for a loose can. Lily said something and then headed for the door.  
  
Yuki pulled his head out of the fridge with great haste and turned to see her retreating back.  
  
"What did you just say?" he asked as his eyes narrowed dangerously.  
  
"I said guys like you are the worst," she repeated as she sat to put her shoes back on. "I don't know what your problem is, and to be perfectly honest I really don't care. But one thing's for sure, the more you treat him badly, the sooner he'll leave."  
  
There was a short series of stomps on the wooden floorboards and Lily was pulled roughly to her feet by a strong hand holding her jumper. She flinched as pain ran through her lungs and looked up to see Yuki's face.  
  
"What would a brat like you know about anything?" he asked dangerously.  
  
"Hands off," her voice rose and pulled herself away from him with an angry expression. "Don't even think about trying to intimidate me you pretty playboy. My own grandmother had more attitude than you!"  
  
"What are you trying to pull here?" Yuki crossed his arms and looked down on her with contempt. "A tough kid from the Bronx act?"  
  
"No," her voice fell again and she averted eye contact. "I'm not tough, and on a geographical note, I'm from Wisconsin. But I know what I'm talking about; you can't go around treating people like they don't matter. It'll hurt them and they'll never come back, that much I know for sure."  
  
"If you're going to whine go somewhere else," Yuki grunted and turned away. "I don't waste my time on bleeding hearts and children."  
  
He started to walk away but Lily didn't leave. She stood where she was, her hand forced into a tight fist and her arm trembling with suppressed anger. Yuki wasn't even half way across the room when an angry rasping sound made him stop.  
  
"You truly are the worst."  
  
Realizing the sound was Lily's voice he turned back around with a frown, she was really pushing his patience by lingering in his house and making moral statements.  
  
"You think that you can just show up and pass me off as some whinger!" she screamed angrily. Her lungs struggled to supply the energy needed for her to scream in their current state, but Lily didn't care, she was too angry to worry about the consequences.  
  
"You have no idea what I've even been through! You sit around on your computer being a complete jerk to everyone around you because you think life has dealt you a crap deal!"  
  
Even though Yuki didn't want to admit it, he was surprised by Lily's reaction. He had judged her to be some quiet, nerdy doormat, yet here she was in the early hours of the morning standing before him screaming about his behaviour. However he didn't have time to recover because Lily was far from over.  
  
"I can't understand what it could possibly like to have someone love you like you have, but you selfishly take it for granted. Do you have any idea how horrible it is to be alone? You."  
  
Her lungs had had enough. There was no air left in them from her screaming and they ached horribly. The dark shapes of the apartment started to spin as her body weakened. Her vision faded as she started to fall forward, no energy to stop herself.  
  
The last thing she remembered before slipping into unconsciousness was landing on something soft and the scent of stale cigarettes.  
  
Yuki checked her pulse as she layed in his arms, to check that she was still alive. His fringe moved a little bit from the air coming from Lily's mouth, so she was clearly still breathing.  
  
Something slipped from the pocket of Lily's jumper and fell on the floor, rolling for a bit before halting at his foot. With his free hand he reached down and picked the small bottle of pills up. It was a bit fuzzy without his reading glasses, but he could still make the print out.  
  
His eyes widened and looked back at the girl sleeping in his arms. You couldn't blame him for being surprised, after all, would you really expect and thirteen year old to have one of the strongest painkillers ever made in her jumper pocket?  
  
**********************************************  
  
2 years ago  
  
"Ok, so I need to get chocolate biscuits for Susan, a deck of cards of Max, the new Harry Potter book for Tiffany, the Offspring's latest album for Matthias, an X-men comic for Tom, some batteries for Elisa's tape deck, baseball cards for Logan, a pack of cigs Jason and what was it that you wanted again Lily?"  
  
"Japanese Vocab for Pros-Book Two," Lily reminded the boy sitting on the bed opposite hers' and he wrote it down on his piece of notepaper.  
  
"You could at least ask me to risk my neck for something interesting," the blonde boy teased. "Like a porno mag or something."  
  
He had to dodge the bedpan that flew across the room and he grinned as Lily tried to give him a filthy look but couldn't because of the laughter that broke through.  
  
"Kidding, kidding," the yellow tinged boy assured her and jammed a white bucket hat on his head before scooping the large collection of American currency off of his bleached sheets.  
  
"You'll be careful not to let Godzilla or Hitler catch you right Artemis?" Lily said with a raised eyebrow at her room -mate.  
  
"Lily I've been smuggling things into this hospital ever since I was chucked in the long term ward. I know by now how to cover my own arse," he said quite offended at her reminder.  
  
"Well excuse me," Lily said sarcastically.  
  
All the children in long-term hospitalisation were kept under the close and militant eye of the two nurses that Artemis had taken the joy in naming Godzilla and Hitler. No one could deny that the names were appropriate because their rule was that if it was fun, it was banned.  
  
If you had a diskman you could forget about using it. The only reading material they allowed was Lives of the Saints, The Bible and The Complete Works of Shakespeare. The only food you were allowed to eat was what the hospital cook dished up and you could forget about leaving your room for anything other than the school lessons, operations and the likely case of death.  
  
Artemis however, was not one to lay down and take crap from a pair of old fuddy duddies just because of a buggered liver. He said that when you're on top of the Grim Reaper's to do list life was too short to play by the rules.  
  
So since he wasn't in any condition to go marching up to the White House waving a flag and screaming about corrupt politicians and the 21 unknown substances in lunchmeat, he charged the children in the hospital 20% extra for whatever they wanted to buy and got it for them. All without the knowledge of either Hitler or Godzilla.  
  
"So what's your new plan Hot Shot?" Lily asked as he pulled on his shoes.  
  
"Little Michael is going to pretend to have a fit in front of Hitler and Godzilla. So when they're distracted I'll sneak out, catch a bus into town, get everyone's stuff and be back before I'm due to be hooked back up to my machine and have pills jammed down my throat."  
  
"If you get caught destroy all evidence that I wanted that book. I don't want to get hit if the shit hits the fan," Lily said with a sigh and picked up Shakespeare from the bedside table.  
  
"Why do you waste your time learning Japanese?" Artemis asked her as he finished doing up his laces. "You never call your Dad and even if you do get out of here, when will you ever use it?"  
  
"I hope to go to a Japanese school and see my Dad when I get out of here," Lily said truthfully with a smile. "Just like you hope that you'll get out of here and go back home."  
  
"Hope all you want," Artemis snorted. "I know that the only way I'm getting out of here is in box and you'll be in and out of long term for the rest of your life where the only time you can practise your Japanese is on the coma patients."  
  
Lily's smile vanished and she looked at her best friend horrified while her stomach churned. This kind of talk and dark expression was completely out of his regular character.  
  
It was like a transformation from a fluffy rabbit to a poisonous snake.  
  
He got off the bed and walked across the room. He paused at the door and spoke again without turning around.  
  
"People like us weren't meant to live right from the start. Hope is nothing more than a shit pipe dream that can send you crazy. I came here when I was five and everyday I hoped that the doctors would tell me something good and I'd be allowed to go home. Seven years later I'm still here taking crap from Godzilla and Hitler."  
  
He thumped his fist on the doorframe and after a few seconds turned around. Lily saw that the usual mischievous flicker that danced in his eyes was gone, replaced with a look that could turn water to ice.  
  
"At the end of the day Japan is drifting in the Pacific and you're in here. If you ever set one foot in Tokyo I'll eat my hat."  
  
*********************************************  
  
"I want you to have this," Lily said in a soft voice and handed Shuichi a tatty old shoebox that was held closed with an elastic band.  
  
Shuichi looked at her pale face with a quizzical look. Lily had slept in till midday that day and when Yuki had spotted Shuichi trying to wake her he'd told him to leave her alone. When she had finally awoke she had refused any food offered to her and had only asked for a glass of water before she locked herself in the bathroom for half an hour throwing up. It was now the early evening and she was watching TV on the couch with Shuichi.  
  
"Well thanks," Shuichi said putting on a smile and taking the box. "It's a little old but I could probably find a few uses for it."  
  
"I want you to have what's in the box," she explained rolling her eyes.  
  
"Oh right," Shuichi said sheepishly and removed the elastic band before gently lifting the top off.  
  
Inside the shoebox there was a mass of paper. Some were colourful and neatly folded while others were just pieces of scrap notepaper with blue ink doodled all over it.  
  
"They're songs and poems my mother wrote," Lily explained as Shuichi started to sort through them. "I thought that they might help you for when you're stuck for a song-like now for example."  
  
Shuichi's pink eyebrows shot up. "Really? Your mother wrote all these?"  
  
"Yea, she was a real literate person from what I could gather," Lily explained and picked out a piece of paper to read. "When I was little I was going through my attic and found a notebook with all the songs she wrote as a kid in it."  
  
She closed her eyes and sighed. "Shame I don't have it any more."  
  
"Did you forget to pack it when you moved?" Shuichi asked picking another song to read. He'd hate to admit that someone other than himself could have written such beautiful lyrics, but there was no way to deny it. Christina had sure had some talent.  
  
"No, me being young and naïve, took it downstairs in a fit of excitement to show my grandmother," Lily's shoulders sagged as she recalled the long ago memory. "I showed her the book and started talking about how my Mum must have been really smart and great to have written all of those songs by herself and my grandmother went right off her rocker."  
  
Shuichi gulped and daringly asked a question. "What did she do?"  
  
"She burnt them." Lily said with a wince of pain and had to take a puff of Ventolin before she could continue the story.  
  
"She yanked the book out of my hands and threw it into the fireplace right in front of me. I remember feeling sick as I watched the flames devour that little book, my mother's legacy had been killed by her own mother."  
  
Lily sighed and sagged back into the couch.  
  
"When I asked her why she'd done it she just said that my mother was a fool of a whore, my father a filthy mongrel dog and I was worse than both of them. I didn't know how she could say that about her own daughter when she'd done nothing wrong. The topic of my parents was completely off limits and the only time I ever heard anything about my mother from my other relatives it was all bad."  
  
Shuichi didn't know what to say. This was the most he'd heard Lily talk about her live back in America and he'd hadn't expected it to be so bad. Perhaps it was time to change the conversation.  
  
"Ano, are you sure that you really want to give these to me Lily chan?" he asked even though he was dying to read all of the lyrics and write a beautiful love song.  
  
"Of course," Lily said with a smile and put the box on his lap. "What's the point of having songs this great if no one is ever going to hear them? You have a beautiful voice Shuichi, so take my mother's songs and shine."  
  
The den door opened and Yuki emerged with computer screen eyes and reeking of cigarettes. After three days of typing he had finally finished his new novel and he'd have to meet with his editor tomorrow.  
  
Lily gulped nervously as she watched him yawn and run his fingers through his hair. He had tried to kick her out last night, but thanks to her collapsing performance she was still in the apartment.  
  
Was he going to let her stay or had he just postponed her exit?  
  
Yuki finished stretching his back and his eyes fell upon the two reading lyrics on his couch. Shuichi smiled at him exuberantly and Lily met his eyes for a spilt second before turning away. It was hard to withstand his gaze for too long, it was like her could see right through her.  
  
"Take a bath."  
  
"Huh?" Lily frowned with confusion. That had been one of the last things she had expected him to say. "Why?"  
  
"Because you stink. Now go," he ordered and grabbing her backpack she obeyed.  
  
Steam filled the small bathroom as the bath filled up with hot steamy water. The lemon scented steam from the hot water and bath salts opened up Lily's airways and she let out a huge sigh of relief.  
  
The hot water soothed the pain in her chest as it loosed the muscles and her lungs relaxed. She slipped into a light snooze and when she awoke her skin had turned a bright pink. She finished up and combed out all the knots in her hair before placing the bath cover on for the next person and left the room.  
  
In the kitchen Shuichi sat eating some dinner and seeing her standing in the doorway in her pyjamas he jumped up and he got her some. She wasn't really hungry but ate out of politeness.  
  
'Well now I know who does the cooking around here,' Lily thought as she found that the food was actually edible.  
  
They heard Greensleeves and the two stopped eating. It took Lily as second to click and then went to retrieve her mobile, skating on the floorboards in her socks.  
  
"Yea?" she said and came back into the kitchen holding the phone to her ear.  
  
Shuichi then lost track of the conversation because Lily started speaking English. Her regular pleasant expression faded and her tone took up a certain firmness. You didn't need a translator to tell that she didn't like the person on the other end.  
  
After five minutes she hung up and frowned as she put the phone down on the table. She didn't look at Shuichi for a while, but she once more took up her chopsticks.  
  
"Bad news?" Shuichi asked with concern.  
  
"Nah," Lily said with a mouthful of rice. "My grandmother is apparently dying and my cousin wanted to know if I was going to chip in for the funeral."  
  
"Gee I'm sorry Lily chan," Shuichi said honestly and put his arm around her for comfort.  
  
"Don't be. I'm sure as Hell not," Lily admitted with a chuckle and Yuki came into the room. "Besides, I could still hear her fat mouth in the background so she's clearly just putting on another attention act. She usually does that when something has annoyed her. I hope that whatever it was really pissed her off."  
  
Shuichi pulled back horrified by what Lily had just said and a corner twitched at the side of Yuki's mouth as he opened the fridge.  
  
"And there's no way I'm putting any money up for a fancy coffin," Lily continued and pointing her chopsticks at Shuichi. "Funeral directors bleed you dry money wise and if it was left up to me I'd chuck the old bat in a garbage bag and leave her out for the trashman to collect."  
  
Neither Shuichi nor Yuki could handle that remark.  
  
Shuichi fell off his chair and had to leave the room for a few minutes. Yuki laughed from behind the fridge door and when he'd finished he had an amused look on his face.  
  
It didn't last long though, he opened his beer and after a large gulp his regular serious expression returned. Lily went back to her food and by the time she'd finished washing the dishes Shuichi was back.  
  
"I'll dry!" he declared energetically and bounced over to the sink.  
  
Lily moved away and let her hair out of its loose ponytail. The brown mess could now do whatever it liked now there was no fear of it getting in any food.  
  
Shuichi pulled a soapy bowl out of the water and moved over to put it on the dish rack. He saw Lily with her hair down and dropped the bowl, shattering into a thousand fragments as it hit the floor tiles.  
  
Lily yelped and jumped away so none of the fragments would cut her as they flew across the floor. She looked up to see Shuichi staring at her with his wide innocent eyes, jaw hanging open.  
  
"What's wrong?" she asked frantically and brushed some hair away from her face.  
  
"Um nothing! Nothing at all!" he blurted quickly and knelt down to pick up the ceramic pieces. He swore mentally for making his surprise so obvious and tried not to look at Lily as she helped him collect the pieces.  
  
'I just couldn't help it.' He said to himself in his head. 'Just for minute there, with her hair down she looked just like Sakuma san at a glance.'  
  
He threw the handful of broken bowl in the bin and got a broom from the cupboard. He started to sweep the tiny pieces into one pile while Lily knelt to pick up more scattered fragments.  
  
After a few seconds he noticed that she wasn't picking up anything. She was just kneeling on the floor with her brown fringe hiding her face from view. Shuichi stopped sweeping and Lily gasped before her shoulders shook.  
  
All the good the bath had done had worn off and her whole body ached.  
  
"Lily chan? What's the matter? Are you sick?" Shuichi asked kneeling down, his voice soft and soothing.  
  
"Don't, just leave it alone," Lily whispered as she tried to keep her breathing steady.  
  
"But why?" Shuichi asked looking hurt. "Don't you trust me enough? Why don't you let me help?"  
  
Lily placed her arm around him and rested her head on his shoulder. Her weight made Shuichi fall back on his behind and he hugged her back as her breaths came in big, heavy sighs.  
  
"You're nice Shuichi," she said in one sigh and took a deep breath in. "But you can't help me."  
  
**********************************************  
  
"Shindo kun please pay attention!" Sakano screamed and Shuichi snapped out of his daydream.  
  
"I was listening!" he lied as all eyes were on him. "We were talking about the video clip we shot when we were in America."  
  
"We were talking about that fifteen minutes ago!" Hiro snapped and punched Shuichi on the head, forcing his face into the board table.  
  
"Sorry, sorry!" Shuichi apologised and when Hiro removed his fist he lent back in his chair.  
  
"We were wondering how the lyrics were going," Fujisaki informed him with his head leaning on his fist.  
  
"Oh great! Lily chan gave me these!" he cried energetically and produced the old shoebox.  
  
He removed the lid and the whole team started to pick through the papers, everyone but K having to dig through their memories for their high school English lessons.  
  
"I didn't want to hurt him, but Larry told me to. Larry took over and killed him," Hiro scrunched up his face in confusion and concern.  
  
K snatched the piece of paper out of his hands and read over it.  
  
"That's just some notes Christina took on a Multiple Personality Disorder patient in medical school," he explained after a minute and handed it back to Hiro. "The song's on the back."  
  
Hiro relaxed and started to read the lyrics. He then leaned over in his seat so he could whisper to Shuichi.  
  
"Hey, is Lily chan doing any better?" he asked.  
  
Shuichi shook his head and raised his piece of paper to hide his moving lips.  
  
"I think she's getting worse," he whispered. "I made her stay home from school today, even though she wasn't really for the idea. Yuki's taking care of her. What?"  
  
Hiro had fish bowl eyes as he looked at his best friend.  
  
"What did you just say?" 


	12. Chapter Twelve

Lily tiptoed through the living room in her school uniform and her backpack on, hoping that Yuki wouldn't wake up.  
  
Shuichi had insisted that she stay home from school until she was one hundred percent healthy and had left her alone with the heavy sleeping novelist.  
  
Her hand reached for the door handle when Yuki spoke.  
  
"Should have tried climbing down the drainpipe," he suggested with a yawn. He had just woken up and had read the note Shuichi had left on the pillow. He would have to think of some way to make him pay for leaving him to babysit all day.  
  
Lily whirled around and had to take a puff of Ventolin to help her stop gasping. That was twice now Yuki had caught her off guard. If she didn't know any better she'd swear he did it on purpose.  
  
"He would have fixed the lock," Yuki explained with another yawn as he walked to the kitchen to get his regular breakfast-beer. "You can't open it from the inside without a key. He can single handedly blow up the microwave, but he knows how to fix the lock. Amazing."  
  
Lily slid down the door and sighed. By some totally unbelievable twist of fate Shuichi had outsmarted her. She smiled to herself at the thought and decided that maybe a day off school wouldn't be such a bad idea.  
  
An empty can joined several others in the bin and Yuki walked back to his bedroom.  
  
"Be ready to leave by the time I'm finished in the shower," he commanded.  
  
"Why? Where are we going?" Lily asked with a curious look.  
  
"Don't ask questions."  
  
Half an hour later the two of them were sitting in silence as the black Mercedes made its way through the city. Lily had changed back into casual clothes and Yuki was dressed up rather nicely in a silk shirt, trousers and a long coat to keep the cold out. It was all black of course-to match his soul.  
  
Lily was dying to turn on the radio to break the uncomfortable silence, but she got the feeling that Yuki would break her finger before she even touched the button.  
  
He parked the car outside a café and the two were led to a table reserved for them inside. They sat down and Lily decided to attempt a conversation.  
  
"This place is rather la-de-da," she stated as she looked at all the well dressed and well spoken people sitting around them.  
  
Yuki lit up a cigarette and took a long drag. Perhaps he should have left her at the apartment.  
  
"So who are we meeting anyway?" Lily asked after examining the flower on the table to see that it was actually real.  
  
"I am meeting my editor," Yuki said blowing some smoke out as he looked up at the ceiling. "You are just going to sit here like a good little girl and say nothing."  
  
"How nice," Lily said sarcastically and coughed as the smoke lingered under her nose. "How much are you going to nail him for?"  
  
"What?"  
  
"Well isn't that what you do when you sell your latest manuscript to a publishing company?" she asked tilting her head to one side. "Make them give you a cheque with an alarming amount of zeros on it so that it will cover your cigarette expenses until the next book?"  
  
Yuki looked at her for a very long time. His hard cat eyes met her innocent kitten ones and he took another huge breath of tobacco. If his father thought that he was going to have any children then he had news for him.  
  
"Sorry I'm late Yuki sama," a smiling lady said putting her handbag down and sitting opposite the author. Her smiling eyes feel on Lily, examining her curiously and she smiled some more.  
  
"It's so nice that you decided to bring your little sister along with you today," she said pleasantly.  
  
Yuki pulled his cigarette out of his mouth with great haste and assured the editor bluntly that he and Lily weren't related. Lily muttered something not very polite under her breath and Yuki pinched her leg under the table, causing her bite her knuckles to suppress a yell.  
  
The two adults started to discuss the costs of the manuscript and Lily started to zone out. Looking around the café at all the posh people brought back memories of Wisconsin and jerk cousins. She sagged down in her chair but sat up again rather quickly when she noticed that all of Yuki's cigarette smoke was wafting in her direction.  
  
"The chief editor has requested a personal meeting with you Yuki sama," the editor said as she slipped the large envelope that held the manuscript into her bag. "He wants to renegotiate your contract."  
  
"What? Why?" Yuki asked halting his cigarette halfway to his mouth.  
  
He'd known that the chief editor had been replaced a month ago, but he didn't know why. He didn't like the idea of renegotiating his contract, he liked the rather large amount of cash deposited into his bank account every month.  
  
"I don't know sorry," the lady said honestly. "But if you could drop by his office some time this week it would be appreciated."  
  
"Let's go," he ordered butting out his smoke and Lily stopped her flashback session.  
  
She quickly said goodbye to the lady and had to run to catch up with Yuki, whom was already out the door. She was puffing and panting badly by the time she caught up with him.  
  
"Hey please don't make me run," she asked and pulled her Ventolin out of her pocket. Her stomach dropped when she realised that it was almost empty. That was a really bad sign since it was the one she'd gotten from the hospital two nights ago.  
  
"I didn't make you do anything," Yuki said with a shrug.  
  
"You're the one who bolted out of there," Lily pointed out. "You didn't even say goodbye to your editor."  
  
"So?"  
  
"Well she is really nice," Lily said awkwardly. "And you left her to foot the bill."  
  
"So?"  
  
"It makes you look rude and cheap," she said bluntly.  
  
"So?"  
  
"It's not a good impression," Lily said with a certain stunned tone in her voice. It was quite clear now that Yuki wasn't someone who cared about what others thought of him.  
  
"So?"  
  
"Oh just forget it!" Lily snapped in frustration and opened the passenger side of the Mercedes. There was just no helping some people.  
  
************************************************  
  
13 years ago  
  
"Noriko, Noriko! You're meant to stop at red lights! Ah, go round the roundabout, not through it! Oh my God! Boom gates! Boom gates!" Tohma screamed as Noriko drove like a nut through the oncoming traffic.  
  
"Shut up Tohma!" she yelled as the car spun around three times before coming to a halt in a parking spot outside the hospital.  
  
She pulled the keys out of the ignition and stepped out into the scorching night. Tohma stayed in the seat breathing heavily until his purple haired friend pulled him out.  
  
They ran along the hospital corridors until they came to a room that had "Barton" written beside the door. Noriko pushed the door open and the two musicians were greeted by loud screams.  
  
"Just don't stand there you idiot!" Christina screamed at the midwife by her feet. "Get this thing out of me!"  
  
"You just need to keep pushing Miss Barton," the midwife said soothingly.  
  
"I am pushing you idiot!" she screamed back red in the face with sweat dripping off of her.  
  
Noriko rushed to her side and Tohma discretely took a place next to Ryuichi on the opposite side of the bed.  
  
"Oh Noriko, thank goodness you're here," Christina cried happily and squeezed the keyboardist's hand tightly. "I don't want to do this alone!"  
  
"Hey I'm here," Ryuichi said in a hurt tone. His girlfriend turned to face him and her eyes shot daggers.  
  
"You!" she screamed hysterically. "This is your fault!" She let go of Noriko's hand and grabbed Ryuichi by the throat.  
  
"You little bastard!" she yelled hysterically and squeezed his throat. "If you ever do this to me again I'll kill you!"  
  
Tohma tried to pull Ryuichi out of harms way as he turned blue in the face and Noriko tried to pry Christina's fingers off of Ryuichi's throat. Those vocal cords were their ticket to fortune, couldn't have them damaged.  
  
The midwife ignored them and just continued shouting words of encouragement. This kind of scene was a regular occurrence in the working day of a midwife.  
  
"If you hadn't of pulled the charm on me that night when we couldn't watch TV because I forgot to pay the electricity bill we wouldn't be here right now! Damn you and your huge amount sex appeal! I just had to fall for your body and gorgeous face didn't I? When I get off of this bed I'm going to grab your ahhhhhhhhhh!"  
  
"Push Miss Barton!" the midwife's voice broke through Christina's screaming. Tohma dragged the nearly choked Ryuichi out of Christina's reach and sighed. With Noriko's driving and Christina's threats it was shaping up to be an interesting night.  
  
The two men looked at the three screaming women. Christina was screaming with her contractions, Noriko screaming as her hand was being crushed and the midwife was screaming louder than both of them with words of encouragement.  
  
"I think we should stay over here," Tohma whispered in his friend's ear.  
  
"Uh-huh."  
  
"She's here!" the midwife yelled and held the baby girl in her arms.  
  
"She?" Christina asked weakly as her head fell back on the pillow and Noriko shook her throbbing hand. Ryuichi judged that it was now safe and walked over to the bed.  
  
"See, I told you," he said with a wide grin and brushed some blonde hair off of her sweaty forehead.  
  
************************************************  
  
The door burst open and the handle made a dent in the wall where it hit. Yuki stomped out of the chief editor's office and stuffed his new contract in his jacket. After a few hostile negotiations he and the editor had come to the understanding that his pay wouldn't decrease, but in actual fact increase.  
  
A few seconds later Lily came out and with a final apology to the man cowering behind the desk, hurried after Yuki. She'd been confused about what had happened for most of the meeting, but she had found one interesting nugget of information. Yuki's given name was actually Eiri.  
  
Therefore, the novelist behind the book she had slagged off in the park a while back was actually him, Shuichi's Yuki.  
  
'I'll make a note not to be so harsh the next time he asks for a review,' Lily thought as she caught up with him at the elevator. The number at the top of the doors showed that the elevator was coming up from the bottom floor so they would have to wait a while.  
  
Lily occupied her mind by looking around the floor and saw that the secretary sitting at the desk behind them was fidgeting a heck of a lot as she looked at Yuki's back. In her hand she held a copy of 'Get'.  
  
Lily turned back around and lent on Yuki's arm, making him look down with a glare. She was too close for his liking.  
  
"Fangirl behind you," she whispered.  
  
He moved his head around ever so slightly to see the squirming secretary.  
  
"Oh no," he muttered and hit the elevator button again.  
  
"Yuki sama! Please wait a minute!" she cried and put the book down.  
  
"Fire exit on your left," Lily said.  
  
"Can you run?"  
  
"Not a chance."  
  
The secretary got up and moved towards them. "I just have a few questions for you Yuki sama!"  
  
It took Yuki half a second to jam Lily under his arm, kick the door to the stairs open and flee.  
  
When they were back at the apartment Yuki made himself a cup of tea and sat down on the couch to study the sales reports he'd been given by his editor that morning. It seemed that his books were down a bit, and he didn't like that.  
  
The less sales meant less readers and less readers meant less money for him. That annoyed him a lot since he'd just gone to all the trouble of renewing his contract.  
  
"Are you looking at your sales reports?" Lily asked with a smile as she looked up at him. She was sitting on the floor with all her homework spread all over the coffee table.  
  
"Mmmmm," Yuki grunted without looking at her.  
  
"Are they up or down?" she asked curiously.  
  
"Down," he muttered.  
  
"That's not good," Lily said.  
  
"Neither is having to listen to you talk," Yuki snapped looking over the paper.  
  
Lily went back to her homework and didn't say anything else for a while. Yuki threw the papers down on the couch and opened his box of cigarettes. If he wanted to bring up his sales for the new book he would have to think of a new marketing strategy.  
  
In the past he'd used the clever marketing schemes of lots of advertising and book signings. Now it was time for something new. He lit up his cigarette and tried to think.  
  
Lily started coughing and he looked over at her. Geez that cough irritated him after a while. It was like living with a miner who had the black lung. Maybe he should throw some of those pills down her throat, just so they'd knock her out for a while. Now that he though about it he should probably botch a couple of them and slip them in Shuichi's food.  
  
Then a possibility ran across his mind.  
  
Lily looked up as she heard Yuki sit down on the floor and he grabbed her chin, holding it firmly between his forefinger and his thumb.  
  
"Oh stop looking so terrified!" he scoffed and turned her head from side to side. "Try to look a little bit more unintelligent will you."  
  
"What are you doing?" Lily asked officially freaked out.  
  
"How old are you?" he asked, his cigarette moving up and down in his lips.  
  
"Thirteen," she said awkwardly and he let go of her.  
  
"You're cute," he proclaimed and stood up.  
  
"Um, thanks," Lily said with a smile. That was a big compliment coming from Yuki. "But why the sudden interest?"  
  
"I have plans for you," he said with a dark smile and went to his study to make a phone call.  
  
"What kind of plans?" Lily cried fearfully.  
  
"You'll see," Yuki sang and closed the door.  
  
'I wonder if I should call the police?' Lily thought and her watch beeped. It was time for another dose.  
  
************************************************  
  
Shuichi arrived home at the early hour of two that afternoon on cloud nine. After only a few hours of rummaging through the old shoebox he and his band mates had put together a new love song.  
  
It was a little bit different from what he usually sang, but that didn't really matter. The lyrics were gold and with only about two weeks until Tokyo Bay Music Festival he didn't need to go into a slump trying to come up with something original.  
  
'I should really thank Lily chan,' he thought as he floated out of the elevator. 'Not only did she give me her mother's songs, she got me the afternoon off.'  
  
After the song had been completed Hiro had pushed Shuichi out of the building with a great deal of force.  
  
"Just leave Fujisaki and me to take care of the rest," he said as he literally threw Shuichi out into the street. "Just go home and check on Lily chan. Hurry!"  
  
'Honestly,' Shuichi thought with a frown at his friend's immaturity. 'Yuki isn't someone that would expose cute little Lily chan to something immoral.'  
  
He opened the door to find Yuki sitting on the couch smoking while Lily slept on the floor, using one of the sofa cushions as a pillow. Yuki was using her as a footrest while he watched a naughty R rated movie with subtitles on the TV.  
  
"Yu-Yuki!" Shuichi squealed and had to hold onto the doorframe to stay standing. "You-you can't watch that in front of Lily chan!"  
  
"Why not?" Yuki asked blowing some smoke into the air. "She's been like this for about an hour now, ever since she took those pills." He then smirked and just for fun decided to stir Shuichi up a bit.  
  
"And I've got to say, judging by how comfortable my right foot is, she's at least an E cup. Junior High students are certainly well endowed these day don't you think?"  
  
Shuichi went beet red in the face. "Yuki don't be so perverse!" he screamed at the top of his lungs and then stopped. "What pills?"  
  
The noise made Lily's eyes half-open and she started to stir from the floor. "Is breakfast ready?"  
  
"No, go back to sleep," Yuki ordered and kicked her head back on the cushion.  
  
He turned the TV off and looked at Shuichi. Shuichi looked at him.  
  
"What?"  
  
Two seconds later Shuichi was on the floor and fighting to keep his pants on.  
  
"Wait, wait a sec!" he cried helplessly trying to keep Yuki's evasive hands at bay. "We can't do it now!"  
  
"We had a deal," Yuki argued and pushed Shuichi's green T-shirt up. "Whatever and whenever. Remember?"  
  
"Yea but," Shuichi trailed off and his eyes flicked over to the sleeping figure by the couch.  
  
Yuki rolled his eyes and swore before getting off of Shuichi. Lily had a rude awakening as he picked her up, carried her to the door, opened it and threw her out into the hall.  
  
Lily slid for half a meter before sitting up on the cold floor. She looked over at Yuki with his shirt open and belt unbuckled with total confusion. How she'd gone from sleeping off her painkillers to being thrown down a hallway she didn't know.  
  
"Go out and don't come back for a while," Yuki snapped and went back inside the apartment.  
  
"Where am I meant to go?" Lily yelled as she stood up slowly.  
  
"I don't care," Yuki stated closing the door. "Just as long as it isn't here."  
  
"How can I go anywhere if don't have any money!" Lily yelled at the door.  
  
After a few seconds the door opened again.  
  
'Great he's come to his senses,' she thought happily.  
  
An airborne wallet smacked her in the head and she ended up once more on the hallway floor.  
  
"Sex fiend," she muttered and rubbed her face. Her head was all groggy and her chest felt stiff from the painkillers.  
  
The other thing that was making her feel worn was all the work her brain was putting into figuring out what Yuki's "plans" for her was. She was getting a really bad feeling.  
  
Greensleeves started to play and something shook in her pocket. She stood up taking the phone out and put Yuki's wallet in her opposite pocket. She flipped the top open and greeted the caller.  
  
"Hi! I'm back in the country! Wanna meet up?"  
  
************************************************  
  
"You're kidding! You're staying with Shindo Shuichi and his lover Yuki Eiri? Oh my God! You could like, sell that to a magazine for millions, no trillions for pounds!" Joan squealed excitedly and started kicking her legs while waving her arms at the same time.  
  
"Yen you mean," Lily corrected and took a sip of her ice cold lemonade.  
  
"Oh yea," Joan stopped acting like a jitterbug for a second while she thought about how strong the yen was on the world stock exchange before going jittery again.  
  
"So is Yuki sama really as handsome as they say?" she asked with her eyes changing to beating love hearts.  
  
"Drop dead gorgeous," Lily admitted and smiled as Joan rocked back and forth on her barstool. "How's your Grandma by the way?"  
  
"Oh she'll be around for another century or two," Joan said waving her hand with a smile. "Anyway, why are you off of school today? I was quite surprised that you answered your phone, I just rang to leave rude messages on your message bank."  
  
"Oh I have a cold," Lily lied and coughed the cough that Yuki despised.  
  
"Some cold," Joan observed and picked up her glass of Fanta.  
  
A man dressed in tight bicycle clothes stopped by their table and looked down at his clipboard.  
  
"Are one of you two ladies Barton Lily san?" he asked with a smile.  
  
"That's me," Lily said and put her glass down. Just who was this guy and how did he know her name?  
  
"I have a parcel to deliver to you," the bike man said putting the clipboard in front of her.  
  
"How'd you know I was here?" Lily asked curiously. "I didn't tell anyone where I was going."  
  
"The mail is under government control," the man whom Lily now figured was a courier said.  
  
"So your saying that Big Brother really is watching and you use mega expensive satellites to track people down all over the nation to give them their parcels?" Joan asked with eyes bigger than her glasses.  
  
"The mail is under government control," the courier repeated darkly and lent in really closely to Joan. "You'd also be advised not to share your theory with anyone else madam."  
  
"Finished!" Lily said quickly and handed the government spy otherwise known as a courier back his clipboard with her signature.  
  
"Great!" he said cheerfully and pushed a parcel with international postage marks into her hands. With a final dangerous look in Joan's direction the courier left the teashop and peddled off down the street.  
  
"Well that was weird," Joan said awkwardly and made a mental note to hack into the postal service on her laptop later. There might be something incriminating in there after all.  
  
Lily didn't reply because she'd just opened her parcel.  
  
"Aww shit," she grumbled and dropped the velvet covered box and leather book on the table with a frown.  
  
************************************************  
  
"This looks important," Shuichi said as he held the package in his hands and read all the private and confidential stamps stamped on it.  
  
"Of course," Lily muttered in an unkind tone and wrote some more stuff down on her project poster. "Lawyers sent it to me from America. Lawyers don't waste their time doing menial chores, they've got bigger fish to fry."  
  
Shuichi looked up at her to see an unfamiliar frown on her pale face and an angry spark in her eyes.  
  
"What is it?" he asked curiously. He knew that he shouldn't ask, but he did anyway.  
  
"Take it out and see," Lily grunted without looking at him.  
  
Shuichi reached into the open parcel and pulled out the large velvet box and the leather book. He opened the book but couldn't make out the handwriting because it was in English. So he slipped it back into the parcel and opened the velvet box.  
  
Inside lay a large diamond on a thick gold chain. The diamond was so big that Shuichi could see tiny reflections of his face in each of its hand cut sides. Surrounding the diamond was hundreds of little pink and blue stones.  
  
His jaw hit the floor and Lily sighed before giving an explanation.  
  
"It's an heirloom that's been in my family since the 15 hundreds. It was handcrafted in France and it was bought by my great, great, oh heck who knows how many greats, grandfather. It's been passed down the family ever since. Some lawyers found it in one of my grandfather's foreign bank vaults last week."  
  
"How come they sent it to you?" Shuichi asked, unable to pull his eyes away from the exquisite piece of jewellery. "Shouldn't of they have sent it to your Grandmother?"  
  
"Come here," Lily sighed and putted the floor beside her. "I'll explain it all to you."  
  
Shuichi shuffled next to her and put the box on the table. Lily closed it with a snap, almost as if the sight of the necklace made her sick.  
  
"This is my family tree," she said waving her hand over the poster paper on the coffee table. "My Grandfather," she pointed to his name on the tree, "married twice and was the inheritor of the Barton Foundation."  
  
"What? The multimillion dollar a year American beef export business?" Shuichi exclaimed falling off the cushion he was sitting on.  
  
Lily didn't answer and continued with her story.  
  
"He had five kids in his first marriage and six in the second. These two groups of children couldn't stand the sight of one another and are still fighting with each other today. They're all sponges trying to soak up the company money to put it bluntly, and they don't care about anyone other than themselves. However, there was one child who did love him for who he was, not for his wallet."  
  
Lily's finger slid down the tree and stopped at the Katakana 'Christina.'  
  
"Your mother!" Shuichi cried. Now things were slowly starting to click together.  
  
"Huh? How'd you know my mother's name?" Lily asked with a surprised look.  
  
"Me? Oh I uh, guessed," Shuichi lied, covering up his folly.  
  
"Ok," Lily threw his an odd look but went on with the story.  
  
"When my grandfather died relatives were queuing up for their share of the fortune. My Grandmother was at the head of the queue, believing that she would be the main inheritor of the business. However my Grandfather had the last laugh. He left everything to my mother, and that sure pissed a lot of people off. Things got worse though when my mother died, and all of the money was passed on to me."  
  
"How come?"  
  
"Because nobody wanted millions of dollars to go to Christina's mixed bastard child," Lily said softly.  
  
"So you're a millionaire?" Shuichi asked trying to change the subject.  
  
"Yea," Lily said with a shrug. "But most of the money is still tied up in European bank accounts. A whole team of lawyers are trying to get it all back still, even though my Grandfather died over ten years ago."  
  
"What will you do when you have all the money?" Shuichi asked curiously.  
  
Lily turned her head slowly and gave Shuichi a long and dark stare. Her blue eyes had darkened and her face was expressionless and hard.  
  
"Let me tell you something Shuichi, I couldn't care less about my family or all of that money. It hasn't been worth what I've had to go through. If it was at my feet right now, I wouldn't pick it up."  
  
************************************************ Hello there all of you who have bothered to read this far. Thanks for all of the reviews, support and ideas you have given me so far. First of all, sorry to all of you Tatsuha fans out there, but he wont be making another appearance in this fic (or at least I think he wont). I really just used him at the start as a cameo appearance that would give you a clue to Lily's identity. Also, I'm sorry about all of the angst that I've written of late, I only really wrote so that Lily relationship with her family would get clarified. This should be the last of it. Well, see you round,  
Hikaru. 


	13. Chapter Thirteen

A wide variety of both Eastern and Western dishes were laid out on the kitchen table, their aromas inviting diners to sample them. All of them had been prepared with great care and the chef was in a real hurry to finish what she was cooking in a frypan over the stove.  
  
Yuki stood in the doorway looking confused. A banquet lay out before a man who hadn't had a decent breakfast in over five years was quite baffling. Her ran his hand through his messy hair and looked at Lily wearily.  
  
She scooped the eggs onto a plate before placing it on the table along with the other dishes. She untied the apron she was wearing and hurried over to the fridge to grab some beers and orange juice.  
  
"What's this?" Yuki demanded to know.  
  
Lily pulled her head out of the fridge and looked over at him. She smiled and carried the collection of beverages in her arms over to the table, kicking the fridge door closed with a small nag kick.  
  
"Morning!" she said brightly.  
  
Her face was still pale and thin and there were still some rings around her eyes despite her large amount of recent slumber, but her body seemed to have recovered a little and her attitude had improved a lot from the previous evening.  
  
"I made you some breakfast but if you don't want it you can just chuck some Gladwrap over it and throw it in the fridge for another day. Shuichi's already had his fair share and left so you can go nuts," Lily said grabbing a glass from the cupboard.  
  
Yuki's dazed state wore off and he decided that this kid wasn't so bad. After all, she cooked, cleaned and kept out of his way. Perhaps he could discuss a trade with Seguchi.  
  
Lily looked at her watch and pulled a face of alarm. She finished setting out the cutlery and walked past Yuki to grab her bag and leave. She had an appointment to keep.  
  
Yuki grabbed the back of her T-shirt and she turned back to look at him curiously.  
  
"Be at the Honya book store at two," he said letting go of her and heading towards the banquet.  
  
"I was actually going to go to sch-"  
  
"School will be there tomorrow," Yuki said without turning around. "And you would have missed half the day by the time you're finished at wherever it is you're going."  
  
Lily thought about that philosophy for a second before shrugging her shoulders. It made sense to do what Yuki said, it was safe.  
  
With another quick glance at her watch Lily scooped an Obento bag off of the kitchen bench and hurried out of the apartment.  
  
**********************************************  
  
"I AM LOOKING FOR THIS GIRL!" a boy shouted very loudly in English at a man in the street while waving a photo of a young girl in his face.  
  
The man threw some money at the blonde boy and then hurried away. The boy sighed and sagged down onto the pavement. That had been the twelfth person who had done that and he'd been trying to find the girl even since he'd stepped off of the plane three days ago.  
  
Perhaps he should have listened to his mother and learnt some of the lingo before buying his ticket. He'd been sure that if he yelled at people loud enough in English they would understand.  
  
Oh well, with all the money people had thrown at him that morning maybe he could buy a Japanese dictionary. All he had to do was ask for directions to the closest bookstore. Great, there was another challenge.  
  
'Where the hell are you?' he wondered as he looked at the photo. 'Who would have thought it would have been this hard to find a single person in Tokyo?'  
  
He sighed and slowly got up. Perhaps it was time for some breakfast; he'd developed quite a liking for salmon and miso soup. He picked up his backpack and all the money that had been thrown at him and stood up.  
  
"Dear sir or madam will you read my book?" a girl walking past sang, horribly out of tune and not caring.  
  
'Geez how lame,' the boy thought as he walked in the opposite direction. 'My Dad likes the Beatles but for a girl my age to be a fan is really sad.'  
  
"It took me years to write will you take a look?" The voice started to fade into the crowd as the boy walked up the street.  
  
He suddenly stopped, swore and ran back towards the voice, his thin figure weaving in and out of the crowd. The wind picked up and his hat blew off.  
  
"Shit!" he yelled loudly as he dashed back for the bucket hat before running back towards the girl. She was easy to spot because like him she was about a foot taller than everyone else in the street, but it was difficult to push through the crowd.  
  
"Paperback writer! Paperback writer!"  
  
Joan abruptly stopped as a boy her age with green eyes jumped in front of her and grabbed her arms tightly.  
  
"Tell me you speak English!" he screamed hysterically shaking her so hard that her earphones fell out.  
  
"Yes, yes I do!" Joan said pulling away. "What's the matter?"  
  
"I need to find this girl," the boy puffed and held up the aged photo.  
  
"Eh? Why are you looking for Lily chan?"  
  
*********************************************  
  
"Lily kun stop bloody fidgeting!" Dr Sullivan yelled as Lily wiggled, squirmed and pushed the American doctor away as she tried to touch her.  
  
"It hurts!" Lily snapped back and sat up on the patient bed that was in Dr Sullivan's office. "And stopped calling me a boy already!"  
  
"When did I call you a boy?"  
  
"You use Kun for boys, San for girls and people older than you and Chan to people you're affectionate towards," Lily explained with a sigh.  
  
Things weren't going well. Lily was so tender around her chest area it wasn't funny and Dr Sullivan had already decided that she needed X-rays done.  
  
"I guess that explains why all the nurses look at me funny," Dr Sullivan said with a laugh.  
  
Dr Sullivan was far from your typical doctor. She was young, wore blue jeans, a red sweater that matched her short hair and spoke to her patients in a language they could understand- not medical mumbo jumbo. She did however wear a long white coat over her clothes, but purely because she liked it.  
  
"All right kid you win this round," she said with a sigh of defeat. "Put your top back on, you're making my cup size jealous."  
  
Lily laughed and pulled her T-shirt back on. Dr Sullivan wheeled her chair over to her computer and Lily hopped off of the bed to look over her shoulder.  
  
"Says here you got some painkillers and a Ventolin here a few nights ago," she said as she brought up Lily's file.  
  
"It's true, and I passed out too," Lily said honestly, "and a few days before I had an attack." There was no point in lying to a doctor for they found out everything anyway.  
  
"That's not good," Dr Sullivan said slowly looking at her with a concerned expression.  
  
"Yea I know," Lily said sitting in a chair next to the computer. "But while I'm here, can I ask you for a refill for my painkillers? I'm all out."  
  
"You're only supposed to use them when you really need to," Dr Sullivan said sternly and typed some more.  
  
"I did," Lily said honestly. "And can I have a new Ventolin too? Actually can I have two? It's always handy to have a spare on hand."  
  
"Lily I'm going to be honest," Dr Sullivan stopped typing and swirled around to look Lily in the eye. "From the sound of things it sounds like you're heading backwards here. I'm going to send you down to the X-ray department now and I'm going to take a longer look at your current situation a little later. I'll need you to come back in few days."  
  
"Doc to be honest I really don't-"  
  
"I know, I know," the doctor said raising her hand to stop Lily talking. "I'd hate the sight of doctors and all this medical stuff too if I were you. Long term hospitalisation can do that to a person, but for now just humour me and do what I ask ok? I'm looking out for you here."  
  
"Yea, you're right," Lily said with a sigh and slouched down.  
  
"Now X-ray is expecting you in fifteen and remember to take it easy," Dr Sullivan said tapping Lily on the head with her pen.  
  
"Right, take it easy, use your puffer, take your regular medication, call your doctor at the first sign of trouble and stay out of the way of irritants," Lily recited the rules that had been drummed into her head over several years.  
  
"That's the stuff!" Dr Sullivan said with a smile. "Now scoot."  
  
**********************************************  
  
Shuichi hummed to Glaring Dream as he walked back to recording room from his interview with a magazine. The topic had been the new song for Tokyo Bay Music Festival and the reporter had been overjoyed that Shuichi had a new song lined up for the performance. He'd forgotten to mention of course all the help he'd been given by a certain somebody with a certain shoebox.  
  
'Maybe I should dedicate the song to Christina's memory,' he thought as he came to the right door. 'I think that Sakuma san would like that.'  
  
He opened the door but stopped suddenly when he heard a familiar voice.  
  
"Oh Fujisaki san it's so big!"  
  
'That's Lily chan!' Shuichi thought with his ears picking up. 'I wonder what she's doing here.'  
  
"Well I really have to thank my Father for it," he heard Fujisaki say happily.  
  
"I've seen it and played with it before but now that I stand back and look at it I realise how awesome it really is," Lily gushed.  
  
Shuichi's hand flew to his mouth as he jumped to a very bad conclusion.  
  
"Well how about we go at it?" Fujisaki suggested.  
  
"Can we?" Lily asked happily.  
  
"Sure, let's do it. Doing it with you is a privilege. How'd you like to do it?"  
  
"Let's start slow then speed up to a really fast finish."  
  
"My you are daring. Would you like to sit or stand while we do it?"  
  
"Can I sit? I still find it awkward to stand and do it."  
  
Shuichi had heard enough. The door flew off of its hinges and nearly hit K on the other side of the room.  
  
"Fujisaki you dammed pervert!" he screamed hysterically. "How could you be so disgusting? She's only thirteen and you're stealing her innocence! You lewd, you pervert you."  
  
Shuichi stopped when he saw the very confused looks that he was receiving from both Fujisaki and Lily. The two of them were standing behind Fujisaki's keyboard that his father had given him and Lily had played and was about to perform a duet on while sitting down.  
  
"Is something wrong Shindo san?" the young keyboard player asked nervously.  
  
A huge sweat drop formed on Shuichi's head and he stood there like a stoned mullet for quite a while. He then shook his head and let out a loud fake laugh as Lily tried to hide a smile.  
  
"So eh, Lily chan, what brings you here?" he asked quickly.  
  
"You forgot your lunch," she said with a smile and popped an Obento bag into his hands.  
  
Hiro snickered and Shuichi's embarrassment meter rose even higher. It was like being back in school except now there was Lily chan instead of his mother.  
  
"Thanks," he said patting her on the head and hid the bag behind his back. "But shouldn't you be at school?"  
  
"Actually I have plans with Yuki san this afternoon," Lily said brightly.  
  
Shuichi's hand fell on her brown head and didn't rise again. Perhaps he had misheard.  
  
"What plans?"  
  
"I don't know to be honest," she said with a shrug. "He didn't say much about it except that I have to meet him at a bookstore. I guess that I'm helping him with his novels or something."  
  
"Yuki asked you to meet him," Shuichi said slowly, twisting some brown strands between his fingers.  
  
"Yep," Lily chirped.  
  
"Yuki wants you to help him." His hand clenched Lily's hair, starting to pull hard.  
  
"Oww Shuichi could you-"  
  
"Yuki never wants me to meet him! Yuki never wants me to help him! Yuki wants you instead! How dare he choose you over me!" Shuichi was shouting loudly as he cried. The others in the room had to jump back to not get soaked in his tears.  
  
"What do you have that I don't? What do I have to do to get Yuki to ask me for help? I can cook! I can clean! I can read really intellectual literature if I try! I could learn English!"  
  
"My hair! My hair!"  
  
There was a frightening bang and Shuichi fell to the ground, Lily's hair relinquished. She stood back and looked at Shuichi's thin figure sprawled out on the carpet.  
  
"Is he ok?" she asked nervously patting her hair down.  
  
"He'll be fine,' K assured her as he placed his gun back in its holster. "You'd best toddle along now Lily chan, you have to meet Yuki don't you?"  
  
"Yukiiiii," Shuichi groaned from the floor.  
  
"Yea, you're right," Lily said and with a quick goodbye left the recording room and headed for the elevator.  
  
If she had of turned around she would have spotted him. Watching sadly from afar.  
  
**********************************************  
  
"I'm here," Lily said and Yuki turned to look at her.  
  
As he sat at the table in the Romance section of the bookshop he noted how she seemed to have lost some of the exuberance she'd shown that morning when she had served him the gourmet breakfast.  
  
"Just how many chemicals did they pump into you at the hospital?" he asked with his cigarette moving up and down.  
  
"None this time but Doc Sullivan said that.." Lily broke off and gave Yuki a surprised look. "How did you know that's where I was?"  
  
"Knowledge is power and I like power," Yuki said with an air of mystery and handed her a bag. "Go and get changed into that."  
  
"Why do-"  
  
Yuki glared and Lily scurried off to get changed. After a few minutes she came back feeling embarrassed; after all you would be too if you were wearing a long pink dress that was covered in frills and bows.  
  
"Is this yours?" Lily asked him as she looked down at the dress. She felt like a doll that had been dressed up for a tea party with Mr Bear and Mrs Rag doll.  
  
As second later Lily was holding her head as a bump popped up.  
  
"Sorry, sorry," Lily muttered as she rubbed her head. "But since I'm here can you tell me why I'm wearing this?"  
  
"You're cute," Yuki said sitting back down at the table and reached into a box that was beside him. "You're far too young to sell anything with sex appeal and I don't feel like doing autographs, so using your cuteness and my literary genius I'm going to sell a large amount of my past best sellers before the new book comes out next month."  
  
Talk about a cold irony. Lily had to stand around selling books by the man who had written the book she'd criticised in the park.  
  
"You really are a vindictive and dirty minded old man," Lily said with a glare.  
  
"Absolutely," he agreed with a grin and stacked some more books up on the table. "Now get to work."  
  
**********************************************  
  
"Shindo san!!!!!!!"  
  
Shuichi stopped walking down the street and whirled around as someone screamed at him. It was blowing a gale and the dark clouds in the sky looked ominous so he was a little annoyed to be stopping for what he assumed would be a crazy fan wanting an autograph.  
  
He saw however that the person calling his name was none other than Joan, long pigtails flapping in the breeze with one hand waving and the other clutching a boy's wrist as she dragged him behind her.  
  
She skidded to halt in front of him and the boy looked somewhat dazed. Joan's energetic nature had that kind of effect on people.  
  
"Shindo san, do you, do you know where Lily is?" Joan panted.  
  
Shuichi crossed his arms and pointed his nose up like a little kid.  
  
"Why don't you go ask Yuki that? I'm sure he'll know. He clearly likes Lily better than me!" he snapped and looked away.  
  
"Don't give me crap for I'll kick you in the bullocks," Joan snapped, talking to Shuichi like he was one of her younger siblings. She'd spent most of the day trying to find him so she wasn't really in the mood for a spoiled brat attitude.  
  
Shuichi feared for his privates and dropped the attitude.  
  
"I've gotta go and pick Daisy, Benjamin and Jamie up from school so take Artemis to wherever Lily is ok?" Joan said with a voice of authority and pushed the skinny boy in Shuichi's direction.  
  
"Yes ma'm," Shuichi gulped. "Who is this guy anyway?"  
  
"An old school mate or team mate or something," Joan said impatiently. "Don't bother asking him yourself because he can't speak a word of Japanese."  
  
She then turned back to the boy called Artemis and jabbered at him in English for a second. Shuichi was just able to make out his name in the string of unknown words.  
  
"This is Shuichi," Joan explained, "he'll take you to Lily ok?"  
  
"Shoe's Itchy?" Artemis asked with a frown.  
  
"No," Joan said with a sigh. She'd been trying to teach him some Japanese but to be brutally honest the boy couldn't learn a second language to save his life.  
  
"Shu-ich-ee," Joan said slowly and wiggling her fingers at the singer. "Now just follow him and you'll be right, and get Lily to call me. Good luck."  
  
Giving a quick hug to both guys she dashed off for the Primary school.  
  
"So, you can't understand a word I'm saying right?" Shuichi asked the boy in the hat who was his equal in height.  
  
"What?" Artemis asked.  
  
"Eh, come on," Shuichi said awkwardly and pulled Artemis along by his sleeve.  
  
**********************************************  
  
Lily was tired, had a sore mouth from smiling, was sick of the repetition of "Thankyou very much" and wanted desperately to burn the dress she was wearing.  
  
Yuki on the other hand was having a great time. Women had flocked in off of the streets to say how cute Lily was and all of them had bought books. Now the store was full of gushing women asking Lily for hugs and the dollars were raking in.  
  
If this kept up he might just have to buy another dress for the release of the new book next month. A high pitched voice put an end to Yuki's good mood.  
  
"Yuki what are you doing?" Shuichi squealed as he saw Lily selling books in her bright pink dress.  
  
"Using your friend to boost my book sales," Yuki said simply and lit up a new cigarette. "Her cuteness appeals to people and I'm using that to help myself."  
  
"But Yuki!"  
  
"Shut up!"  
  
Shuichi crossed his arms pouting and Yuki saw the blonde boy watching Lily.  
  
"Whoever he is he's not moving in," Yuki said with a glare in Artemis' direction.  
  
"Huh? Oh no he's Lily's friend or something," Shuichi explained. "I just brought him here to see her."  
  
"Well make sure he keeps his hands to himself. I don't want my property to become used goods. She needs to stay pure if she's going to be cute," Yuki said after taking a long drag.  
  
"What do you mean your property?" his lover demanded, hands on hips. "She's not your daughter!"  
  
"No but I've decided that she's useful to my profession. And its not like Sakuma Ryuichi is putting her to good use right now is he?"  
  
"Yuki," Shuichi growled in a low voice and was about to flip his lid.  
  
"Thankyou very much!" Lily said with fake brightness and handed over the last book to a lady.  
  
"Ok kid we're done," Yuki said looking at his watch. She'd been at it for about four hours straight.  
  
"Thankyou very much!" Lily said in a wobbly voice. She felt like crying with relief.  
  
"Hey Lily chan look who I brought!" Shuichi chirped. He no longer felt jealous of Lily after seeing what Yuki had made her do. She could sell his books for four hours in a horrible dress any time she wanted. The pleasure was all hers.  
  
Lily took her face out of her hands and looked up. She hadn't noticed Shuichi arrive with all the money swapping going on.  
  
Her blue eyes fell on the boy and she dropped the money she about to hand over to Yuki.  
  
"Well I'll be God damned." 


	14. Chapter Fourteen

"Itadakimasu!" the two girls cried cheerfully and started to dig into their ice-cream sundaes.  
  
"Ok whatever," Artemis said with a shrug and picked up his spoon.  
  
He, Lily and Joan were inside an ice-cream parlour as the rain came down in buckets outside. Sure the two girls were meant to be in school, but how often does an old overseas friend come to visit? And, as Joan pointed out, they could do the dumb English speaking tourist act perfectly.  
  
"So how long have you been here?" Lily asked as she had another spoonful of cream and ice cream.  
  
"About a week now," Artemis said. "You sure weren't easy to find, and I was worried that I might not recognise you. However you're still pretty much the same as when we went our separate ways."  
  
He then sat back in the booth to look at Lily from a distance before sitting straight again.  
  
"But I gotta admit, you certainly grew a nice bust. Can I touch 'em?"  
  
"No," Lily said darkly and Artemis looked thoroughly disappointed.  
  
"Where'd you get the money to come here anyway?" Joan decided it was time to join the conversation.  
  
The blonde boy put his hands together and a mask of sugar sweetness came over his face.  
  
"Mummy," he said in an innocent voice, "maybe a little overseas trip will help me adjust to being out of hospital and help me forget that you and Dad didn't visit me all that often."  
  
"You schmuck!" Lily couldn't believe that he had tried such a thing-or that it had actually worked.  
  
"No Lily, I'm a born business man. As I'm sure you'll remember."  
  
They finished their ice creams and after a burp the groups newest member said, "Come on girls, you promised me a sightseeing tour of Tokyo that I would never forget. Let's hop to it."  
  
**********************************************  
  
The sky matched the sea with it's blue as seagulls flew overhead into the sun's bright rays. The woman had her arms wrapped around her lover's neck as she rode on his back. They were both grinning as if they didn't have a care in the world.  
  
"Ano, Sakuma san?"  
  
Ryuichi stuffed the treasured photo back into his jacket and smiled up at the person standing beside him. Shuichi was fumbling with his fingers and tried to think of the best approach to take.  
  
The two were standing of the roof of N-G as the heavy rain of the morning died off to a mere drop every now and again.  
  
"What is it Shuichi na no da?" Ryuichi asked holding Kumagoro close to him while he sat on the concrete roof.  
  
"I have something I need to talk to you about," Shuichi said slowly. "Something about Lily chan."  
  
Ryuichi broke away from Shuichi's eyes and looked out toward the grey landscape of skyscrapers.  
  
"Sakuma san?"  
  
Ryuichi didn't look back at him but Shuichi decided to continue on. He was tired of being in the dark all the time, and it was clear now that there was something seriously wrong with Lily's health. He had to help her somehow, and to do that he needed answers.  
  
"She's sick, that much I can figure for myself, but she wont open up and tell me what's wrong. She's been taking these pills and it could have something to do with her asthma but I.."  
  
"I know."  
  
Shuichi stopped abruptly.  
  
"Lily has been sick ever since she was born," Ryuichi said without looking up. His voice had changed now, it had become deeper somehow and it seemed almost dangerous. Shuichi couldn't help but feel a little bit scared.  
  
"She was such a weak baby, everyone thought she was going to die, even Christina," he thought back to a time long ago.  
  
"What's the matter with her?" Shuichi asked sitting down, but Ryuichi kept his eyes fixed on the grey city. After a while he spoke again.  
  
"When she was only a month old she contracted a very bad lung infection and her life hung in the balance for weeks. She managed to survive but the infection left her lungs permanently scarred making them extremely weak, so when she developed asthma later on we feared for her life."  
  
The rain started to pick up as the two idols sat in silence. Shuichi felt very cold and strange as he sat next to Ryuichi then, usually their conversations were happy and energy filled. But not today. Today somebody else was in Sakuma Ryuichi's body, and K's words floated around in his mind.  
  
"What makes you thing that he's always been like that?"  
  
Perhaps this was the real Sakuma Ryuichi and the toy loving thirty-two year old simpleton was just an act to shield himself. It was like looking in a mirror while a completely different you looked back.  
  
"I understand how you must feel Sakuma san, but Lily really misses you. She wants her Dad back. She's living with me right now so why don't you-"  
  
Shuichi stopped as Ryuichi's hard eyes pulled away from the city landscape to bore into the youth's eyes.  
  
"You don't know anything," Ryuichi said coldly. "No one here does. Do you think you could go on living if Yuki san died?"  
  
Shuichi froze at the thought. He remembered how afraid and lost he had felt that night he had gone home to find the apartment empty. He could only begin to imagine what it would be like if Yuki disappeared from his sight forever, never to return.  
  
"I'd die," Shuichi croaked weakly, the mere though making him sick to his stomach.  
  
"That's right, you do die along with the one you love, or at least part of you does," Ryuichi's voice was now angry and hard. "I died back with Christina that day the driver ran that red light and left her dying on the road."  
  
"I'm sorry Sakuma san I didn't realize.." Shuichi tried to apologise but Ryuichi didn't let him finish, he was going to make the young man pay for his ignorance.  
  
"You don't know what it's like to hold the person you love most in your arms as she's bleeding to death. You don't know what it was like when she looked up at me to ask why and I knew that there was nothing I could do."  
  
He stopped for a second and his eyes squeezed shut with anguish.  
  
"You don't know what it's like to leave your child behind so that you can make a better life for her. You don't know what it's like to live in fear because your daughter could die easily anytime. You don't know how much it hurts me to see her and not have the courage to go up to her and hold her again. No Shuichi you don't know, you don't know anything!"  
  
Ryuichi jumped to his feet and stormed across the roof to the door, slamming it behind him, leaving Shuichi in his own thoughts all along except for the wind and rain.  
  
********************************************** "And this," Joan said proudly, "is Tokyo Bay!"  
  
Since Joan had been living in Tokyo the longest, she had decided that it was best that she lead the tour. Lily had quickly informed Artemis that it was best to let her have her way when she was in one of her super energetic moods.  
  
The rain had stopped briefly while they'd been travelling on the bus, but now it was really starting to pick up again.  
  
"Why the Hell are we at the beach in friggin apocalyptic weather!?" Artemis screamed over the howling winds.  
  
Lily noted that in their three years apart he hadn't bothered to clean up his language.  
  
"Hey who's leading this tour tourist boy? You or me?" Joan snapped back with her hands on hips.  
  
"When the tourist's testicles are about to freeze and fall off he has right to complain to the insane leader!" he yelled back as a hailstone hit a car behind him.  
  
As the two continued to argue Lily wandered over to the stone wall to get a better look the bay. Anchored ships were tossed around like feathers on the wind as the waves rose high and then came crashing down. As the rain splashed down on the waves it was hard to tell where the water stopped and sky started. The light shining from buildings on the other side of the bay seemed so lonely, like candles in the night.  
  
Looking now down the long stretch of wet sand Lily saw in the distance some sort of building frame. She strained her eyes trying to make in out but had trouble seeing through the rain.  
  
"Hey Joan!" Lily yelled over at the tall girl who was still arguing with Artemis. He was so skinny the Lily was a little bit afraid that the wind would take him away.  
  
They stopped squabbling and Joan flicked the droplets of water off of her glasses with her forefingers like windscreen wipers to see better.  
  
"Yea?"  
  
"What's that thing over there?" Lily pointed at the thing in the distance.  
  
"That's where they're building for the Tokyo Bay Music Festival," she explained after a minute of glaring. "That metal thing over there is the stage I think."  
  
"Great time for a concert," Artemis said sarcastically as he joined them on the wall.  
  
"Usually they hold it in summer," Joan is in a matter of fact tone, "but Japan held this year's Hockey tournament. Therefore the board directors of the concert decided to move the festival to a later date when the hype from the tournament died down."  
  
"How do you know all of this unimportant stuff?" Lily asked with a raised eyebrow.  
  
"I read all of my Dad's gossip magazines from cover to cover," Joan said proudly.  
  
"Ahh, gossip magazines," Artemis said with a smile that meant he was looking for trouble. "The airhead's encyclopedia."  
  
Lily wondered how the people of England would feel knowing that their ambassador for Japan read gossip magazines while her two friends bitched at each other.  
  
She didn't ponder too long though as her chest began to hurt.  
  
*********************************************  
  
"Hey the people in that office building aren't working very hard!" Artemis snapped as he looked through the telescope.  
  
The group was now at the famous Tokyo Tower, the world's tallest TV aerial as part of their sightseeing tour. Artemis and Joan were currently scanning the city landscape to find a murder or some other crime being committed, just like in Hitchcock's novel "Room with a View."  
  
So far all they had seen was a lot of curtains and cement.  
  
"Take a look," he pulled away from the eyepiece and offered the high powered telescope to Joan. As she lent over he looked across the observation deck to see Lily sitting at a table by herself, one hand over her chest with her eyes squeezed shut tight.  
  
Artemis had spent many years around Lily so he knew exactly what that look meant, and he knew what was likely to happen next.  
  
"Hey Joan keep looking and I'll be right back," he said and slipped a few coins into the telescope to set the timer back.  
  
"Ok, hold my glasses will you?" she asked waving her glasses in his general direction.  
  
He took them and strode over to where Lily was sitting. Pulling a chair out he flopped onto it and smile brightly at his friend.  
  
"What's the matter baby doll?" he asked putting an arm around her shoulders.  
  
"I don't feel so good," Lily admitted.  
  
"Asthma or the other stuff?" he asked dropping the bright attitude. This was worse then his first impression a minute ago.  
  
"Other stuff," Lily croaked.  
  
"Have you seen someone about it?" Artemis asked in a firm voice.  
  
"Yea and I got some pills so you can stop worrying about it," she said but didn't look up at him.  
  
"What kind of pills?"  
  
"Don't worry about it."  
  
Deciding that Lily wasn't going to tell him how bad her current condition was, Artemis took matters into his own hands. He grabbed her backpack off the floor and tore open the zips, searching wildly.  
  
"Hey what are you doing?" Lily demanded, pulling the bag away from him.  
  
In his hand Artemis held a bottle of pills. He couldn't read the Hiragana and Kanji so he strode over to Joan and handed her glasses to her.  
  
"Isn't this the stuff they give to really sick people?" she asked after she translated the writing.  
  
Artemis snatched the bottle back and looked to where Lily had been sitting. She was gone.  
  
Frantically they two teens looked around for their friend. Joan cried out and pointed at the closing elevator.  
  
"Lily wait!" Artemis shouted and ran for the closing doors. "You can't be left alone when you're like this! Wait damn it!"  
  
The doors closed as he reached them and the green eyed boy slammed his fist against the steel doors. The elevator attendant started to give him a firm warning but it was useless for Artemis didn't understand a word.  
  
"Artemis what's going on?" Joan asked looking worried.  
  
He didn't say anything quite a while, he just stood there with his head resting against the cold door.  
  
'If she has to take those then..oh no."  
  
After a few minutes he moved away and turned to his new friend.  
  
"Come on Joan. Whether she admits it or not, she needs help."  
  
**********************************************  
  
"BIG NEWS!" K yelled as he came through the door waving a handful of papers.  
  
Hiro stopped tuning his guitar and lent it against the wall. Fujisaki looked up the piano book Lily had lent him and Shuichi stopped staring into the wall he'd been looking at for nearly an hour.  
  
"What is it K san?" Sakano asked feeling worried. Usually K's news lead to some information that led to some chaotic situation that evolved Shindo san and some important event.  
  
"It's all been finalised!" he said gleefully. "A week after the Tokyo Bay Music Festival we're set to start our tour through thirty districts of Japan."  
  
"Thirty districts!" cried Fujisaki. "That would take weeks! No, months!"  
  
"Four months to be exact," K said brightly and handed everyone in the room a sheet of paper. Written all over it were dates and names of cities they'd be visiting.  
  
Hiro was very happy to see that they'd be spending a little over two weeks in Kyoto. He then noticed that something was missing, something that usually caught everyone's attention at times like this.  
  
"Shuichi are you all right?" he asked noticing his friend's unusual silence. "You've been pretty quiet today."  
  
"I, uh," Shuichi looked up from his list of dates. "It's nothing really. Nothing at all."  
  
'If I go what will happen to Lily chan?'  
  
*********************************************  
  
Yuki had had far too many cigarettes. Even he thought so and when I chain smoker admits that's he's had too many you know that that's a lot.  
  
With no inspiration for a new book, no Shuichi to shag and no kid to break child labour laws with, Yuki had spent most of the day smoking while he watched Americans sue one another on cable television in between naps.  
  
The door handle turned and he looked away from the screen. Death warmed up came through the door and left its shoes at the door.  
  
"Welcome back," he muttered as Lily put her bag down and waved her hand in front of her face. The smell was awful.  
  
"Thanks," she whispered and coughed.  
  
The whole apartment seemed to have created its own fog. It lingered under her nose and made her cough some more.  
  
Yuki frowned as he heard it, that cough really did give him the shits.  
  
"Go have a glass of water," he snapped over the hacking noise and Lily nodded before going into the kitchen. Yuki focused once again on the TV but found it hard to hear over the ruckus Lily was making. He wanted to tell he to shut up and leave him in peace, but even he though that would be a bit unfair.  
  
Things went this way for a little while longer but it wasn't until there was a sound of breaking glass that Yuki became slightly worried.  
  
He grabbed the remote and turned the TV off. The coughing still came from the kitchen, but it was louder now.  
  
"Are you all right kid?" he asked loudly.  
  
The only response he got was more coughing.  
  
"I said are you all right?"  
  
Yuki swung his feet off of the coffee able and feeling slightly irritated pushed the kitchen door open and walked in.  
  
It wasn't a happy sight that greeted him.  
  
Tiny fragments of glass were scattered on the floor and a big chunk of what used to be a drinking glass lay by Lily as she sat on her knees.  
  
For a second she stopped coughing and the stunned author heard just a whisper of a word before her body shook with loud coughs again.  
  
"Help."  
  
Glass jammed itself into the bottom of his feet and knees as he dropped to the floor. He had one hand on Lily's back and he tried to pull her hands away from her mouth with his other.  
  
"Kid! Kid listen to me!" Lily could hardly hear him over her own noise.  
  
"What's the matter?" he pulled her hands away and Lily struggled to speak.  
  
"There's too much *cough cough* it's *cough* choking me!"  
  
Suddenly her body lurched over and blood spilled out of her mouth all over her hands as well as Yuki's and onto the floor. Yuki let go of her and more blood followed, like a fountain of horror and death.  
  
"Lily!" Yuki yelled and held onto her. This was the first time he'd ever called her by her name but neither of them would remember it.  
  
He didn't know what to do; his brain just wouldn't work. He knelt there as he watched her choke and cough up more and more blood like some dying animal.  
  
"Yu-ki-san..."  
  
She fell on her side with closed eyes and blood dribbling out of the corner of her mouth.  
  
'I don't want to die.'  
  
Then darkness came. 


	15. Chapter Fifteen

It was an odd collection of people outside the operating theatre at Tokyo Hospital. A novelist, a singer, a tourist and a schoolgirl all sat together on a bench in silence. The air between them was thick you could carve it with a knife.  
  
Artemis' surf-watch beeped, signalling the fourth hour they'd been sitting there but nobody took any notice. To all of them it felt like they'd been sitting there for four weeks.  
  
The doors to the operating theatre burst open and Lily was rushed past them on a bed before any of them got a chance to see her.  
  
"Move your arse!" Joan yelled at no one in particular, breaking the cone of silence that had imprisoned the company for four hours.  
  
Artemis and Shuichi didn't need telling twice. They got to their feet but Yuki grabbed Shuichi's arm to stop him. The two teens gave chase to the disappearing bed and patient, knocking passing people over like bowling pins.  
  
"No running in the hospital!" a nurse cried after them angrily.  
  
"Screw you!" Artemis had never been good with taking orders.  
  
"Yuki let me go!" Shuichi whined at his lover.  
  
"They won't let you in to see her now," Yuki muttered and let go of Shuichi's arm. "She's alive now, that's all we need to know."  
  
The vocalist gazed longingly down the hall and after a second of thought he decided that Yuki was right. With a sigh he sat back on the bench and sniffed.  
  
"Don't even think about crying," Yuki warned. He'd gone four hours without a cigarette so it wasn't the right time to rub him the wrong way.  
  
"I'd cry if I were you, ya know. It's a bloody sad case, poor kid."  
  
The two men looked up and saw a tall woman in green surgical clothes pulling a pair of rubber gloves off of her hands. Shuichi got a sick feeling in his stomach as he realised that the red liquid on her gloves was Lily's blood.  
  
The woman yawned and flung the used gloves in the bin before rubbing her thin face.  
  
"Can we speak to Lily's doctor please nurse?" Shuichi asked timidly.  
  
"I am the doctor you frigging idiot!" Dr Sullivan snarled viciously. "I'm the one who's been draining the blood out her lungs for four bloody hours if the blood on my clothes didn't give it away already!"  
  
With a yelp Shuichi grabbed onto Yuki's arm and shook with fear. Yuki however seemed unfazed.  
  
"Sorry, sorry," she said running her hand through her short red hair. "I just really hate it when people assume that there's no such thing as female doctors, and I've been on for five, so please excuse me if I'm a bit short."  
  
"Five hours?" Yuki scoffed with an air of supremacy. "That's nothing."  
  
"No," Dr Sullivan said slowly like she was talking to an impatient child. "Not five hours, five days. One of the other doctors in this department is off on holidays, so instead of hiring a fill in the board of directors decided that someone here could just take over his shifts as well as their own."  
  
"You must be very dedicated Doctor," Shuichi tried to boost his popularity while still holding onto Yuki.  
  
"I drew the short straw," she grunted.  
  
A nurse scurried up the hall towards them with a clipboard and an energy drink in her hands.  
  
"Dr Sullivan," she said passing the can over, "Mr Penrose is back again. He had his knee operated on by Dr Ayanami a month ago but says it's still giving him trouble."  
  
"Thanks Katori kun..I mean san!" Dr Sullivan said shaking her head in frustration and tucked the clipboard under her arm. She drank more then half the can of caffeine filled liquid before letting out a long sigh.  
  
"Ahh, beautiful sweet nectar of the Gods," she sighed and then remembered the two men in her company.  
  
"Come on you two," she said. "I need a word with both of you while you're here. I'll fix Mr Penrose's little red wagon on the way to my office."  
  
"Fine, I'll see you at home," Yuki said in Shuichi's general direction.  
  
Dr Sullivan whirled around and glared at the exiting novelist.  
  
"You stay!" she commanded. "You brought her in, you know the most. Now come with me and bring your toy."  
  
"Toy?" Shuichi said with an indignant expression.  
  
"I can't imagine that he's the bitch," the doctor said rolling her eyes and the three made their way through the disinfected labyrinth of white with Shuichi sulking along behind.  
  
They came to a hall of curtains and after a quick look down at the clipboard Dr Sullivan pulled one of them aside with great haste.  
  
"Mr Penrose?" she asked the old man sitting on the bed with a walking stick in hand.  
  
"Oh yes doctor! How are you? Sorry to trouble you but my knee is.."  
  
"Yea yea," the young woman said impatiently. "Stand up and turn around."  
  
With a considerable amount of grunting the old man obeyed and lent on his walking stick. Dr Sullivan handed her clipboard to Yuki and pulled her foot all the way back.  
  
Mr Penrose gasped and there was a click. The old conger straightened up and turned around with more grace then a ballerina.  
  
"Thankyou, doctor! Thankyou!" he cried and beamed at the three of them before carrying his stick down the hall.  
  
Yuki and Shuichi didn't know what to say. Is this what doctors learnt during their long years of medical school? Obviously you didn't need high scores to practice medicine, just a gold medal in kickboxing.  
  
"Ta," Dr Sullivan said and took her clipboard back.  
  
"Doctor you just,"  
  
"All in a days work," she said to Shuichi's stunned face. "Now lets head over to my office quickly, I have to do open heart surgery in half an hour."  
  
**********************************************  
  
A white shining light shone in Artemis' eyes and he could hear a sweet voice in his ear. He felt himself lifting and he wondered what the afterlife was going to offer him.  
  
"Snap out of it you dipstick!" the sweet voice now resembled an nail being run down an iron sheet and the dazzling whiteness from the ceiling lights disappeared as he was pulled to his feet. The feeling of bliss that had filled him moments before now felt more like the time he'd accidentally mistook soy sauce for cola.  
  
"If this is what waking up next to you is like you're never going to get banged," he grunted as Joan's angry and worn face glared at him.  
  
"You can talk," Joan grumbled as Artemis rubbed the bump on the head Joan had ever so graciously given him. "I don't exactly see you having to beat a crowd of girls away from you with a stick."  
  
"What just happened?" he asked when he couldn't come up with a good comeback.  
  
"The nurses locked the door after you very colourfully demanded that they let you see Lily," Joan said angrily. "So when you couldn't pick the lock with my hairpin you hurled yourself at the door, thus causing some kind of minor concussion."  
  
"Oh, now I remember," Artemis said dully as the temporally lost memory came back to him. "Do you want to try climbing in through the window?"  
  
"What's the point?" the tall girl asked picking her backpack up off of the floor. "There's no way we're going to get in there and even if we did climb up twenty odd stories, Lily wont wake up. She's got drugs coming out her eyeballs remember?"  
  
Artemis' green eyes filled with surprise and awe.  
  
"You know, you really are quite smart, despite what Lily says."  
  
"What does Lily say?" Joan demanded to know, shocked that Lily didn't see her as the goddess she thought she was.  
  
"Never mind, it's getting late," Artemis decided that he was too tired to stir Joan. "I'm going back to my hotel."  
  
"Why don't you get your stuff and come and stay with me?" Joan offered. "That way you can save your spending money."  
  
"Cool, thanks," Artemis beamed at the idea of sponging off somebody else. Like all business men, he never let an opportunity pass him by and when he got back home he could tell his brother that he'd shacked up with a girl.  
  
Of course a few minor details might be overlooked and a few more might be created in the retelling.  
  
The two tired teens walked through the halls of death and disease, following the exit signs that would lead them to where Joan's limousine was waiting.  
  
A few minutes later a nurse walked with a purpose to Lily's room. She unlocked the door and opened it slowly, as not to wake the sleeping girl.  
  
"Stay as long as you want," she whispered sympathetically to the man behind her. "No one is really allowed to visit yet but I understand how much little girls mean to their Dads."  
  
**********************************************  
  
"Do you guys want something to drink?" Dr Sullivan asked as she pulled her fifth energy drink out of the fridge. Yuki didn't say anything as he absorbed the decor of the room. Dr Sullivan's "office" as she called it was nothing more than a broom closet- literally. The place stank of old cleaning products and Yuki was positive that somewhere a sponge was rotting.  
  
In the far corner she had mini fridge cram packed with energy drinks and chocolate and her desk was really just a TV dinner table with some papers on it. Above their head a single light globe swung too and fro on its cord, casting shadows in all directions.  
  
On one side of the "desk" Yuki sat on collapsible chair and Shuichi sat two feet lower, on a upside down bucket. Dr Sullivan pulled back her swivel chair on the other side and cracked open her can.  
  
"Ok gents how long ago did you adopt Lily? You need not be shy with sharing all of the details, unlike some I'm all for same sex adoption."  
  
Shuichi's jaw dropped to the floor and Yuki turned on the doctor like a cut snake.  
  
"You think that we're that brat's parents?" he yelled. Why did woman constantly think that he and Lily were related? And to think that he would ever let someone like Shuichi raise a kid, the whole idea was just stupid!  
  
"You're not?" Dr Sullivan asked dully. She was too tired to be embarrassed.  
  
"Damn right!"  
  
"We're just babysitting her at the moment," Shuichi explained quickly, pulling his jaw back up. "Her father is, uh, out of town."  
  
"I see," the doctor said pushing her glasses up her nose. "So what do you know about Lily's condition?"  
  
"Um, well she has asthma, and there's something to do with scarring," Shuichi squeezed his eyes tight with thought.  
  
"Ha! You silly little man!" Dr Sullivan chuckled. She always did find people's ignorance amusing. "You're on the tip of the ice burg. See for yourself."  
  
She picked Lily's file off the top of her fridge and stood up to face a box on the wall. She flicked a switch next to it and the box flickered a few times before turning off.  
  
Dr Sullivan cursed and gave Yuki a look out of the corner of her eye. He stood up, moved his head around the light bulb and thumped the side of the X-ray box. It turned back on and stayed on.  
  
"Cheers," she said brightly as he sat back down.  
  
"Pardon me for asking doctor but, why is everything in your office.."  
  
"Budget cuts," she said simply to the singer and gave him a weak smile. She pulled out a piece of plastic and stuck it on the box.  
  
"This," she said like a TV chef, "is a healthy set of lungs."  
  
The two men nodded to show their understanding.  
  
"And this," she continued placing a second X-ray on the screen. "Is Lily's lungs."  
  
**********************************************  
  
The respirator breathing and the clock ticking were all that made noise in the hospital ward. Occasionally a nurse would patter by in slip on shoes or someone would be wheeled past on their bed, but that was all.  
  
Lily's brown hair was darkened with sweet and the mask over her face would repeatedly cloud up as the machine helped her to breathe. Lights from the city buildings threw strips of light across the room and in a chair beside the bed Ryuichi sat in a chair, singing softly and stroking his daughter's face with his fingertips.  
  
"I've been charmed by your eyes from far away; wake up and wait for me. Call out and break the night's barricade; the crowd comes out of the reflection."  
  
Nine years. This was the first time in nine years that he'd been able to touch her smooth face. Nine years since he'd been alone with her. Nine years since he left her alone, to be pushed around by abrasive family members and to let her life go by in a hospital ward. He'd been hiding for nine years.  
  
"(there's no way out) if you plan to endure the impact (until it collapses) a projected lie."  
  
Lily whimpered and Ryuichi pulled his hand away. Her brow wrinkled with pain and her chest rose off the bed.  
  
"Shh baby, shh," he said soothingly and placed his hand on her forehead. "Daddy's here, I wont let anything hurt you."  
  
He coaxed her in his calm voice and Lily once more fell into dreams.  
  
As the machines around them beeped and sighed, Ryuichi found himself think back. Back to a time that he wished he could forget.  
  
********************************************** 13 years ago  
  
A woman with long fair hair walked into a hospital room barefooted wearing a hospital gown holding a book in hand.  
  
In the middle of the room a man wearing a faded T-shirt and a red headband sat, hunched over an incubator like a scientist striving to create scientific history.  
  
"You've been sitting there for three days y'know," Christina said softly from the door.  
  
"She's held on this long," the man said without turning around. "Just a little while longer and she'll be in the clear."  
  
Christina's face crumbled slightly with sadness and walked over to her boyfriend. He sat up straight making the chair creak and she sat down on his lap, wrapping her arm around his neck.  
  
"You need to get some rest Ryuichi," she said softly. "You haven't slept at all have you?"  
  
"I can't leave her alone, not even for a minute," he let his head fall onto her chest and his voice softened. "Not even something really strong could move ah, what do you Americans say? Running beasts?"  
  
"Wild Horses," Christina said stroking his knotty hair. "But I heard the nurses talking before, and they said that the Matron was going to get you to leave. So I don't think Wild Horses are necessary."  
  
"She'll have to kill me first," Ryuichi grunted.  
  
Christina gave up trying, Ryuichi was as stubborn as a mule when it came to people he loved. After they'd first met he left over three hundred messages on her answering machine a day asking her to call. He had made so many calls by the end of the first week that the Phone Company had cut his phone cord. That was about the same time he'd started writing letters (delivered through the mail slot personally because he couldn't afford stamps).  
  
Christina looked over to the little human in the incubator and wondered how she could even be alive. She was no bigger than a football, but by some miracle she was fighting, fighting of the army that attacked the very fibres of her lungs. Without a hope and without a name, their daughter fought on.  
  
"Do you want me to read to you for a while?" she asked kissing Ryuichi on the head. It would be good if she could divert his attention for just a little while.  
  
"Yea, that would be nice," he said with not really caring if she did or didn't. His eyes remained transfixed on the little heart beating in the incubator.  
  
Christina opened the paperback in her hand, on the cover was a portrait of the poet and across the top was written: "William Blake. Selected poetry."  
  
She opened the faded paperback and pulled her bookmark out.  
  
"I went to the Garden of Love, And I saw what I had never seen: A Chapel was built in the midst, Where I used to play on the green.  
  
And the gates of this Chapel were shut, And Thou shalt not writ over the door; So I turn'd to the Garden of Love That so many sweet flowers bore,  
  
And I saw that it was filled with graves, And tomb stones where flowers should be: And Priests in black gowns were walking their rounds, And binding with briars my joys & desires."  
  
Christina pulled her head out of the book and mentally groaned.  
  
'Way to go!' she thought. 'Pick a poem about tomb stones, loss of love and binded desires! Real appropriate for the situation!'  
  
"Chris, I really love you and I know you love your literature, but," Ryuichi lifted his tired face and gave a sheepish smile. "I didn't understand a word of that. I'm too dumb."  
  
"You're not dumb," Christina frowned and thumped him on the head lightly with her book. "Nobody understands Blake the first time round. It takes years to understand what poets are on about and you're meant to find its meaning for yourself. What I might think is right could be completely different to what you think is right, but that doesn't make either of us wrong."  
  
"Oh right," Ryuichi said with a nod.  
  
"You didn't understand that either did you?"  
  
"Nuh," Ryuichi admitted.  
  
Christina picked up the book once and turned to another page. Perhaps she should start Ryuichi off on something that wasn't so deep, perhaps Mother Goose's collection of Rhyming words or something. That is after all, where we all started.  
  
"The modest Rose puts thorn: The humble Sheep, a threat'ning horn: While the Lily white shall in Love delight, Nor a thorn nor a sin her beauty bright."  
  
"That's nice," Ryuichi mumbled. "I actually got that."  
  
"And you got it on the first time around too," Christina was happy to see that he had been listening even though he way still looking at the baby on the respirator.  
  
"Y'know," she said after a minute.  
  
"Hmmm?"  
  
"If she's as stubborn as you, I think she'll pull through."  
  
Ryuichi looked up at her. It was well know to everyone from Tohma to the man who ran the milkbar down the road that he was the dreamer and the hoper and Chris was the logical and realist one. She'd never been too confident about their daughter's survival and had prepared for the worst. Yet here she was, willing to support the underdog.  
  
"Yea, Lily is going to be ok," he agreed and rested his head on his girlfriend's chest.  
  
In a matter of moments he was asleep.  
  
**********************************************  
  
"Well it's not pollen," Dr Sullivan said holding a thick texta in her hand. "The last time I was outside Noahs Ark was floating down the street."  
  
The novelist, singer and doctor were writing up a brain storm chart on Butcher's paper with all the things that could be upsetting Lily's health.  
  
"Stress do you think? She's had a lot of school work to catch up on lately and I think her social life's been a bit rocky too," Shuichi suggested.  
  
"Maybe," Dr Sullivan said after a few seconds, "but that wouldn't be enough to get her this bad."  
  
She wrote his idea down on the paper all the same though, just to make him feel important.  
  
"Pollution?" Shuichi said. "Tokyo does have a lot of smog, and once Fujisaki told me Lily went out to get some fresh air."  
  
"I don't think so," Dr Sullivan said tapping the texta against her lip. "That would have caused a cough here and there when she first arrived, but her lungs should have adapted to it by now."  
  
Shuichi looked up at the X-ray and his stomach churned. No matter how many times he looked at Lily's X-ray he never got used to it.  
  
The two organs had long white scars covering them like they'd been used as a bear's toy. It was hard to spot a piece of lung that wasn't damaged in some way.  
  
"Now to be honest with you I'm actually really surprised this happened."  
  
Both men turned to the doctor who was on her tenth energy drink.  
  
"Sure these lungs aren't exactly the healthiest I've ever seen, but I've been looking over Lily's old medical records and I've got to say that she's really improved from when she had problems as an infant."  
  
She pushed some files off of her TV tray and opened up a manilla folder.  
  
"It says here that her doctor even took her off her pain killers about six months ago, and no doctor would suggest doing that unless they were really confident about it. So there had to have been a constant irritant to make her go back to her pain killers."  
  
"She never said anything about anything," Shuichi said softly. "It's like she doesn't trust me at all. I'm sorry I can't help you any more."  
  
"Don't be ashamed of yourself Shindo san," Dr Sullivan said softly. "I think it's because she trusts you that she never told you anything."  
  
Shuichi lifted his weary head in surprise to see the foreign doctor smiling at him.  
  
"I see it all too often in this line of work. People won't share their medical secrets or tell their worries to the people closest to them, even if it means that they're putting themselves in danger. It's hard for them to admit that they have a weakness, even to someone they're close to."  
  
"But why?" Shuichi asked desperately, he could feel tears coming on. "I would have understood."  
  
"Well maybe," Dr Sullivan said softly. "She didn't want to be seen as weak or different by somebody that she loved."  
  
Shuichi's head shot up and the drops of water flew into the air. Dr Sullivan just smiled and didn't say anything more, she didn't have to know the full facts to know that she was right.  
  
"Do not despair any more Shindo san, all she wants is for you to be there for her, that's all."  
  
Shuichi nodded and whipped the remaining salt water away from his eyes. He was going to be there for Lily, no matter what.  
  
There was a beep and Dr Sullivan started to gather up all the papers on her tray into one big pile.  
  
"Sorry guys, the clock's ticking and if I don't go now my patient's heart won't be if you get my gist."  
  
Both men stood to leave and Yuki stared to fiddle with his lighter. His cravings were driving him crazy to the point where shoving a whole box of cigarettes in his mouth and lighting it sounded good.  
  
Dr Sullivan gasped and both men stopped.  
  
"Hey you!" she pointed at Yuki wide eyed. "You haven't been smoking around Lily have you? Please tell me that you're not that stupid."  
  
His silence spoke for him.  
  
**********************************************  
  
Hikaru: Ok, Ok, Ok. I know that I've been slack with my up loads, but it's not like I've been watching the dust collect on my monitor or anything. I've been tied down with school and my part time job to what seems like an illegal extent. The work sure comes thick and fast in Year Eleven and these past two weeks I haven't been able to even think about this fic with all the assignments I've been given and the constant Literature essays.  
  
Well, with that said I have to publicly apologise to Shiroi Hikaru, whom was kind enough to e-mail me and I did promise to finish this chapter earlier. Gomen nasai! Please be my reviewer till it's finished!  
  
I was in a real hurry to get this up, so if the grammar is terrible, well, too bad.  
  
Later,  
Hikaru.  
  
P.S: Thanks to animelyrics.com for the Sleepless Beauty translation and the poems are from 'William Blake Selected Poetry' published by Penguin. 


	16. Chapter Sixteen

5 years ago  
  
"Can't anyone else see that this is a load of crap?" Artemis asked from the back of the recreation room.  
  
He was sitting cross legged on the table tennis table (purely because he wasn't allowed to) as the other children watched early morning cartoons.  
  
"Be quiet! You're ruining the show," one girl snapped, turning her head to glare at him.  
  
"What's there to ruin?" he asked throwing his arms up.  
  
"If anyone is at all interesting in what bucket hat boy has to say raise their hand," the girl said lightly turning back to the TV.  
  
Nobody raised their hands.  
  
"Pack of arseholes," Artemis grumbled and very carefully got down off the table tennis table. He still had stitches from his latest poke-and-prod so he had to do everything slowly as not to pull them open.  
  
He walked down the corridors and wondered how he was going to spend his day. Hitler and Godzilla were watching him like a hawk since his little performance last week.  
  
Deciding to liven things up for the short-term patients he'd taken all the ward nameplates and had switched them around.  
  
Honestly, the way people going in for X-rays had been screaming downstairs, you'd think they didn't know that leprosy patients were transferred to a nice tropical island for treatment.  
  
'Maybe I'll raid the kitchen,' he thought and keeping in the shadows so Godzilla wouldn't see, snuck though the ward's entrance door.  
  
He sighed with self satisfaction and turned for the kitchen. His attention was averted however by a girl who looked about his age standing next to a suitcase, holding a teddy bear and looking up at the name plate on the wall.  
  
"What do you want?" Artemis asked with a slight frown. He hated wondering loonies and curious parties coming in to spread their sympathetic vibes.  
  
"Um, I don't know if I'm in the right place," the brown haired girl said in a small voice.  
  
Artemis looked at the nameplate and saw that it said 'Anthrax Ward' in big letters. He smiled smugly to see that there was one plate Hitler hadn't changed back.  
  
"Where you going to?" he asked, arms crossed.  
  
"The children's long term," the girl said smiling, quite happy that she'd found a new friend.  
  
Artemis' tough composure melted like the GI Joe his brother had thrown in the fireplace last Christmas because he'd just been told that Santa was running the same scam as the Easter Bunny.  
  
"Really?" he asked blinking. "Where are your parents?"  
  
"Mum's in Heaven and Dad's working," she said holding her teddy close to her. "Grandma and some of my cousins dropped me off outside before they went to celebrate at a theme park."  
  
The mustard coloured boy didn't know what to say. His parents and life time enemy (his brother) visited every once in a blue moon, but the doctors had to pry them off with a crow bar when he'd first been admitted to long term.  
  
He shivered as he thought about those first few weeks back when he was five. He'd cried and screamed for days, begging to go home and asking what he'd done wrong to end up there. He remembered the fear.  
  
"Come on," he said to the girl and both of them worked together to push the suitcase through the ward doors.  
  
Artemis took her to Godzilla but before he could swap names or get the goss on the fresh meat, Hitler pulled him aside and dragged him back to room for his medication.  
  
She threw him on his bed and after jabbing him with some needles and tubes, turned the machine next to the bed on. It whirled and hummed as it secreted bile and performed other various metabolic functions on behalf of his shonky liver.  
  
After a little while the girl came in, escorted to the bed opposite Artemis by Godzilla who held onto her suitcase. She hopped up on the bed with her teddy and after a good telling to by the demonic nurse, was left alone with the boy and his machine.  
  
They pretended not to be looking at each other for a while before she spoke.  
  
"Are you Artemis?" she asked.  
  
"Yea why?" he asked, trying to give the impression that he was number one around there.  
  
"The nurse said you were the devil."  
  
"Yea, well Hitler would know," he said with a sigh, dropping his tough composure. "I guess you're my new roomie?"  
  
"Uh huh!" she nodded exuberantly, happy to be having a conversation with somebody who didn't hate her. "What happened to your old room mate though?"  
  
"Died," Artemis said casually with a wave of one of his long hands.  
  
"Oh that's sad," she said, her smile falling.  
  
"It happens a lot around here if you haven't figured that out yet. The minute they send you here you know you're screwed."  
  
The girl rested her chin on her teddy bear and didn't say anything for a while. Artemis looked on like a sport's spectator before the silence was broken by a sniff.  
  
"So you're saying were all going to die in here?" she asked without looking up.  
  
"Well yea," he said with a cold chuckle. "Healthy people don't get hooked up to theses babies do they?" He gestured to the machine beside him.  
  
More sniffing.  
  
Artemis jumped back and then hissed as pain stabbed at his sore abdomen from his sudden movement.  
  
"Ow! Uh, um don't cry!" he said hastily waving his hands. "You'll be ok I'm sure! Not everybody here dies, just a staggeringly high percent! I mean, I mean uh ah...."  
  
"I want my Dad!" the girl screamed  
  
**********************************************  
  
"Kinky prostitutes can offer fantastically great sex."  
  
"What?" Joan pulled her head out of her Biology book and gawked at Artemis, who sat next to her on the waiting bench near Lily's room.  
  
She had assumed that he was a typical testosterone filled boy by how he had been on her laptop downloading porn till two in the morning, but this talk of prostitutes put a whole new spin on things.  
  
"That's how I remember the Classification Levels," Artemis took her book and flicked back a few pages. "We could never remember the order so Lily and I made up little acronyms. Lily's was 'King Penguins Can Only Fly Going South' and I made up 'Kinky Prostitutes Can Offer Fantastically Great Sex'."  
  
Joan looked at him for quite a while, unsure of what to say. How on Earth was this guy Lily's eldest and most cherished friend? To compare the two would be like comparing salt to pepper.  
  
"It works," Artemis assured her. "Give it a whirl."  
  
"Kinky prostitutes can offer fantastically great sex," Joan muttered, keeping her voice low so that no one would hear her. If word got out that she was talking about prostitutes the Tabloids would be all over her Dad.  
  
"So what is the classification order?" Artemis acted like a school teacher.  
  
"Kingdom, Phylem, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species."  
  
Joan beamed before smothering him in a tight embrace.  
  
"Can't keep them off me," he said to himself and patted Joan's shoulder.  
  
"Hello Joan chan. Any word?"  
  
Shuichi stood before them, his face grey and thin from a sleepless night and having to sing at gunpoint all day.  
  
"Not a thing," Joan sighed and let go of her Biology tutor. "We got here at about nine this morning and they haven't let anyone in there except Yuki sama. And unless he left when we went to buy drinks, he's still in there. Did you see anyone else while I was reading Artemis?"  
  
Joan turned to see that her companion (whom didn't understand any of the lingo) had pulled his hat down over his face and had gone to sleep.  
  
Joan sweat dropped and could feel her cheeks going red. Trust this foul- mouthed pervert to make her look stupid in front of her cute idol.  
  
"You jerk," she growled and picking up the empty cup by her foot, scooped out what was left of the ice and tipped it down the front of his T-shirt.  
  
It was like a bolt of lightning had hit the young male. He jumped three feet in the air sending his hat flying and pulled at his T-shirt viciously before taking the whole thing off.  
  
Artemis screamed a few ugly things that can't be written due to certain laws in literature and Joan was really happy that Shuichi couldn't understand what was being said.  
  
"Is this what happens when you get your period or something?" Artemis asked when he'd finished with the abuse and tried to squeeze his top dry.  
  
"You deserved it!" Joan argued.  
  
"For doing what? I was actually being nice for once! Remind me never to help you with homework again!"  
  
"What is that!" Shuichi gawked at the sight on Artemis' chest.  
  
"Wassa gigga what?" the boy crinkled his brow at Shuichi before looking back at the ice woman.  
  
"He said," Joan translated for him, wearing Shuichi's same expression and pointed at the thing he'd been looking at. "What is that!"  
  
**********************************************  
  
"If there was a stupid Olympics you would have won the gold, silver and bronze," Dr Sullivan held Lily's wrist and looked up at the clock on the wall.  
  
Pulse and blood pressure were normal.  
  
Yuki didn't say anything but continued to glare. Ever since Doctor Sullivan had walked in ten minutes ago all she had done was insult him. He didn't bother to argue back though, she was right.  
  
"She should wake up soon," the young woman put her patient's hand down gently. "I only gave her enough drugs to knock her out for about twenty four hours, and if my watch is right she's entering the home stretch right about now."  
  
She picked up her clipboard and headed for the door. It clicked closed for a few minutes before it burst open again, making Yuki jump a bit in his chair.  
  
"Oh yea and one other thing," Dr Sullivan looked up from her clipboard.  
  
Yuki looked at her expecting to hear something medical.  
  
"You're an idiot."  
  
The door closed and Yuki hunched over in his chair. All day he'd sat there as the rain poured outside. And all day Lily had slept.  
  
He focused his attention back on the sleeping girl and his eyes softened. The doctor was right, if it weren't for him, Lily wouldn't be there. Because of his selfishness, Lily had nearly died.  
  
He tried to think of something else but it was no good, he couldn't block out the memory of Lily on the kitchen floor, struggling for life, begging for help. In his head he could hear his father's voice.  
  
"We must all take responsibility for our actions Eiri, and accept the good along with the bad.  
  
Great advice Pops, had it ever got him anywhere? The old bastard was always so high and mighty with his good old advice from God. Thought that just because he spent his entire life on his knees praying for an absolution that would never come, he could do whatever he liked with other people's lives. The old..  
  
Eiri turned his head away and glared bitterly at the floor tiles. There was no point trying to blame this on his father, the responsibility for this was his and his alone.  
  
It was his habit, his cigarettes and his apartment.  
  
That's right! I had been his apartment, so why should he be the only wallowing in regret and blame? I was his home, he could do whatever he liked for crying out loud. If this brat had of had a problem the door was always there.  
  
And it was her own fault that she didn't say anything. How hard could it have been to say, "Can you not smoke? It makes me sick."  
  
That was when Yuki gave in trying to defend himself. He knew it would have been hard to tell someone like himself something like that. He would have looked down on her for her weakness and his selfishness would have had him still smoke.  
  
"I don't want to leave her alone while she's sick!"  
  
He could remember Shuichi's words as plain as day, and there'd been enough clues. The coughing, the irregular sleeping patterns, the painkillers, the lack of breath, the sudden shots of pain, the hospital visit, the Ventolin and the collapsing performance. He'd had it all figured, he knew exactly what was going on, yet still...  
  
Yuki jerked his head away and glared at the rain spattered window. His reflection glared back at him, showing off his chiselled features and his startling eyes. To a passer by he'd be handsome, but he saw his reflection as ugly.  
  
"Yu....ki....sa...n."  
  
His head whipped away from the window and looked back at the fragile life on the bed, shocked from the sudden noise. Blue eyes embedded in a ghostly white face looked up at his surprised face with a mixture of fear and relief.  
  
"What happened?" her voice was muffled by the mask over her face and she moved to remove it.  
  
Yuki caught her hand and shivered when he realized how cold it was.  
  
"You're freezing in hospital," he said, unable to stop the flood of relief washing over him.  
  
"Have you been here the whole time?" she asked before scrunching her face up in pain.  
  
"Take it easy and lay still," Yuki commanded in his deep voice and stood to reach the spare blanket on the shelf above the bed.  
  
"Oh geez, this is killing me," her frozen hand clutched the bed sheet under her and the pressure rose higher and higher. She closed her eyes tight in the stupid hope that when she opened them again the pain would be gone and that it had all been one big bad dream.  
  
Something soft and warm touched her forehead and a voice filled her ears.  
  
"It will all be ok, the pain will pass."  
  
The clock on the wall ticked away and with each second the pain faded bit by bit. Lily breathed deeply and kept reciting the words of comfort over and over in her head.  
  
Her hand let go of the now crumpled sheet and sighed with relief, the pain was gone.  
  
Yuki opened up the blue blanket and spread it over her, making sure that it didn't get tangled in any tubes or knock anything important looking over. He observed that her IV bag was nearly empty and made a mental note to chase somebody up on it.  
  
"Have you been here-all this time?" Lily asked between breaths.  
  
"Yes. And you're Father stopped by too," Yuki sat back down in his chair and Lily's eyes flicked open. She gazed over, the two met for a second before she closed them again.  
  
"You don't have to make up stories to make me feel better," she said softly.  
  
"I'm not."  
  
"Thankyou for trying to help me Yuki san," Lily said. "But I know that he just doesn't care, and I was a fool to ever hope that we'd meet again."  
  
The last of her energy drained and she fell back into a deep slumber. Yuki looked at her for a very long time, thinking about her, about himself and about Sakuma Ryuichi.  
  
**********************************************  
  
"The morgue parties with everyone were the best ever!"  
  
It was the next day and Artemis and Lily were beaming exuberantly as they recalled memories from a time long ago.  
  
"What?" Joan gasped, covering her mouth with horror.  
  
"Morgue parties," Lily said through her mask. "Nobody ever went down there at night so all us kids in long term used to stash goodies in the cooler along with a body to keep it cool until night time when we could sneak down there."  
  
"Mind you, we always had to pick an oldish body to sit the stuff on," Artemis pointed out. "Once we stashed our loot in with a guy who hadn't been dead long and when we pulled the tray out he sat up. Scared the shit out of us big time."  
  
"It sat up?" Joan gawked.  
  
"Yea, your muscles still contract after you die, which is why they store dead guys in those narrow capsule things."  
  
On the other side of the bed Shuichi wasn't sure whether to laugh or be violently ill. On his knees sat Joan's laptop that she'd hooked a microphone up to and was running a translating program. The poor girl was feed up being in the middle of all of Artemis' conversations.  
  
"Just what kind of school did you two go to exactly?" he asked weakly and turned the computer around for Artemis to see.  
  
"School?"  
  
Lily and Artemis looked at each other before looking back at the confused Shuichi.  
  
"We didn't go to school together Shuichi," Lily explained, clouding up her mask. "We were in the long term ward of hospital together."  
  
"For how long?" Joan asked, equally surprised as Shuichi.  
  
"Four years," Lily sighed.  
  
"Seven years," grunted Artemis before he smiled faintly. "Geez, when I say it like that, it makes me wonder where all the time went."  
  
Nobody could think of anything to say. Joan and Shuichi looked at each other for a second before pretending that they hadn't. Lily gave Artemis a grim smile and sighed.  
  
"What was it like?"  
  
"Horrible!" both teens yelled at the singer. Shuichi jumped and looked down at the computer to try and hide his embarrassment. He didn't need to be told that that had been a stupid question.  
  
"Um Artemis, speaking of hospital and all..." Lily rolled her eyes back to her friend and fiddled with her fingers awkwardly.  
  
"Yes?"  
  
"Well I'd always thought that since you'd never returned my letters and you'd been sick with your liver for such a long time, I sort of assumed that you were.."  
  
"Dead," Artemis finished for her and crossed his arms in a temper and she nodded. "Thanks a bleeding lot."  
  
"Well what was I meant to think?" Lily threw her arms up dramatically. "That you'd suddenly got better after more than half your life in hospital? Life isn't an 'Opra Miracles' special y'know."  
  
Artemis pulled up his T-shirt and ran his finger over his white scar.  
  
"New liver," he said proudly. "It's second hand, but it does the job ok."  
  
"Oh wow!" Lily breathed deeply at the sight and touched his chest. "The donors finally pulled through."  
  
"Yea, it only took seven years," he said with a fake air of casualty.  
  
Lily took her hand away and looked him in the eye. "Well people do have to die before they can donate Artemis."  
  
"I know that!" he snapped as he pulled his top down. "What bugs me is the fact that there are only a handful of people who give their organs to those in need after they die and how people on the waiting list die waiting."  
  
"Some people have an emotional attachment to their organs," Joan said.  
  
"How can you have an emotional attachment when you're dead?" Artemis demanded to know.  
  
"He's got a point there," Lily admitted.  
  
Shuichi felt really left out. In a conversation about hospitals and lack of organs, there wasn't really much that he could contribute. Perhaps it was time for a conversation change, after all he hadn't risked being pumped with lead by a certain manager just to sit by quietly.  
  
"So Artemis kun," he twisted the microphone to face him. "When do you leave?"  
  
Artemis read the translation and looked awkward.  
  
"Good question," Lily agreed. "Just when do you head home?"  
  
"Um, well, tomorrow."  
  
"TOMORROW!?" everyone yelled in disbelief. Artemis had to cover his ears and the voices nearly blew his thin physique over.  
  
"But, but Artemis, you just got here and I," Lily closed her eyes to hold back the tears. "Why do you have to go so soon?"  
  
Joan and Shuichi watched on nervously as an unfamiliar genuine look came over the young man's face.  
  
"I'm sorry Lily, but my parents couldn't afford to send me here for long to start with. New livers don't come cheap you know," he said honestly, holding his palms out.  
  
Shuichi rose to comfort Lily but Artemis bet him there. He eased himself onto the bedside and took her hands in his. She opened her eyes to see a smile that she'd thought had been lost long ago.  
  
"You don't need me here to be ok," he said resting his forehead on hers, "the fact that you got this far on your own proves that. The only thing you need is hope."  
  
"Hope? But you said that hope.."  
  
"Yea, yea, I know what I said," Artemis said with a sigh, hating to admit that he was wrong. "But after you left I thought that I might as well give hope another try. And what do you know, I get a postcard from Tokyo and a new liver, not to mention that I lived through the transplant surgery. Hope does work Lily, you proved that to me."  
  
Lily couldn't help herself, she reached up and hugged him. Mind you it was a rather uncomfortable hug since he was so spindly and she could feel half his bones poking into her.  
  
"Yep, you're not going to be lonely, that's for sure," Artemis said with a satisfied sigh.  
  
Lily's eyes snapped open and seeing Artemis' expression of pure bliss pushed him off the bed and pulled her mask off.  
  
"Artemis you pervert! You were feeling up my breasts as I hugged you weren't you!" she yelled furiously.  
  
"Lily chan please, be careful, your lungs," begged Shuichi.  
  
"Sorry babe I couldn't resist!" Artemis picked himself up off the floor with a triumphant grin and dusted his hat off.  
  
Lily was a deep scarlet and the snorting noise Joan was making as she covered her mouth made her even more embarrassed. She watched the white bucket hat rotate in his hands and she thought of the perfect revenge.  
  
"Hey you," she said with a wicked smile.  
  
"What?"  
  
"Did you say that if I ever set one foot in Japan you'd eat your hat?" Lily asked in a sugar sweet melody.  
  
"Yea so?"  
  
"Where are we Artemis?"  
  
The horror that crept over his face was like a man's who'd just realised that he'd filled his tea with powdered laxatives and not sugar. He was quiet for a few seconds before gulping deeply.  
  
"Anyone got some mustard?"  
  
**********************************************  
  
"Sorry Lily couldn't make it dude," Joan said scratching the back of her head as the two waited outside the Custom's gate. "Yuki sama was going to see if they'd release her early but y'know, hospitals."  
  
"Yea I know," Artemis said nodding his head. "Getting leeway in there is about as likely as the Pope on a pogo stick."  
  
"Nice analogy, may I use it?" Joan asked.  
  
"Sure, but draw my trademark if you ever use it in print. And one other thing, is this Yuki guy that pimp lord who abuses Shoes-itchy?"  
  
"He IS NOT a pimp, and it's Shuichi," Joan massaged her temples and was a bit thankful that he was leaving. There was no denying that he was draining.  
  
"Ok, ok, you don't have to give yourself a hernia over it. But he does look like a pimp lord." Artemis said bluntly. "I'd better get the suitcase inspection and strip search over with now if I want to make my flight."  
  
The two hugged and Joan fell for the same snag.  
  
Artemis smiled as a big red handprint throbbed on his face and picked up his new hat. Joan's face had gone red and was breathing heavily.  
  
"Well ones thing's for sure, I wont miss that or you lying around my house in your underwear," she snarled and zipped her jumper up.  
  
"Hey, I know you worship me," Artemis said and wheeled his suitcase through the Customs gate. He was just about to surrender the banana he'd been saving for morning tea when Joan bowled into him.  
  
"How'd you get in here?" he asked catching his balance as she panted in front of him.  
  
"I managed to fool the guard because I look foreign. Hey wait.... I am foreign!"  
  
She was the only one who laughed at her joke.  
  
Artemis placed his hands on her shoulders and put on a fatherly voice, though failing miserably.  
  
"Now Joan, I know that in our short time together we got rather fond of one another, but there comes a time when people need to say goodbye and go home."  
  
"Lily wanted me to give you this," Joan took no notice of him and handed him a leather bound book. "She said you'd know what to do with it."  
  
He took the book in one of his slim hands and flicked it open. He read for a few seconds before that familiar evil businessman grin covered his face.  
  
"Oh believe me Joan, I know exactly what to do."  
  
"What?" she tipped her head to one side in confusion.  
  
"It's a simple tactic called," he paused for dramatic effect. "REVENGE!"  
  
Other travellers shuffled away from the boy laughing maniacally, which stopped abruptly when the girl beside him yelled excitedly: "Snow!"  
  
**********************************************  
  
"Ah it's snowing! I knew it would start today," Lily said happily as she watched the white fluff balls fall past her window like a curtain of white beads in her purple pyjamas.  
  
"Get back in bed," someone commanded behind her.  
  
Lily turned to see Yuki standing at the door, frowning with his coat scattered with white flakes.  
  
"Oh hello Yuki san," she said smiling. "Isn't it Pretty? Hey, you're name means 'snow' doesn't it?"  
  
He grabbed her wrist and pulled her away from the window dragging her IV behind her, though her eyes never left the marvel outside. She sat back on the bed and Yuki threw the blankets back over her.  
  
"You shouldn't be off your respirator," Yuki said with his hands on his hips, glaring down at her.  
  
Lily was dying to say something like 'Yes Mum' or 'Roger Captain' but didn't think that it was particularly wise.  
  
"Dr Sullivan said that I could stay off it for a few hours if I was feeling up to it," Lily explained happily, though a little confused about this sudden lavishing of worry.  
  
"She said could not should," Yuki said with a raised eyebrow and deciding that it would make things go easier, Lily put the mask back on and flicked the switch on the large machine. Pretty soon she was humming away like a fish tank.  
  
"You know, you don't have to come here everyday," Lily said as Yuki took a seat. "You're a busy man."  
  
"Stop talking and start breathing."  
  
Lily obeyed and Yuki started to wonder how he was going to torture doctor Sullivan when he got his hands on her. What kind of a doctor would say that she could stay off her machine it she was feeling ok? Wasn't misjudgment the thing got Lily here in the first place?  
  
'Well no actually.'  
  
Yuki shook that train of thought off and noticed that Lily was smiling at him.  
  
"What are you so happy about?" he asked coolly.  
  
"Nothing," Lily said still smiling. "Do you want to watch some TV?"  
  
Thanks to her great medical insurance Lily had been put in her own room with a television, armchairs and a room service menu. Shuichi had said the other night that it would be nice to get sick, just to go there.  
  
"Do what you want," the novelist grunted and Lily started to surf through the channels.  
  
Making sure that Lily was completely preoccupied, Yuki concealed a yawn behind his hand. After raiding his sister's house for Sakuma's Ryuichi's address all night he was worn out. Shuichi hadn't been much help either.  
  
"Yuki should we really be doing this?" he asked as he looked at the globs move in the lava lamp.  
  
"Seguchi gave me a key, so therefore he doesn't mind me going through his stuff. And turn that bloody thing off, it's disgusting, I have half a mind to throw it in the bin for breaking fashion laws."  
  
"But Yuki, this is personal stuff we're through," Shuichi whined as Yuki threw wedding photos over his shoulder before pulling the draw out of the cabinet and tipped the contence on the floor.  
  
"Well they constantly go through my personal affairs all the frigging time so it all evens out," he grew frustrated, unable to find his prize.  
  
"Go look in the living room," he commanded and Shuichi slouched off, riddled with guilt and upset at be yelled at.  
  
Three draws later there was still no sign of Sakuma's address written on anything. Yuki threw the draw across the room, causing Shuichi to cry fearfully in the living room.  
  
"Who is this guy? The f$#^ing Phantom? Does he live in a hobo shelter or something?"  
  
Furiously he pulled open the last draw so hard that all the CDs stored in there spilled out onto the floor. Yuki looked down on them and saw the familiar faces of Tohma, Noriko and Ryuichi on the cover.  
  
'So Tohma's hiding it from her too,' he thought and went to join Shuichi in the living room. 'This wont end well.'  
  
"Look! Shuichi's on TV," Japan's best looking man with a bad attitude was brought back to the present by Lily's voice.  
  
He looked up to see the three members of Bad Luck sitting at a long table in the background while a news reporter spoke to the camera.  
  
"Today internationally successful band Bad Luck have publicly announced today their decision to go on a nationwide tour that will take four months to complete."  
  
The reporter disappeared as Lily hit the power button on the remote. She didn't look at Yuki at all and a silence befell the room, the snow still falling the whole time.  
  
"He didn't tell you did he?" Yuki said finally.  
  
Lily shook her head but didn't turn to face him.  
  
"Is this all my life is Yuki san? Is it just a big collection of secrets and lies?" 


	17. Chapter Seventeen

"Ryuichi! Hey Ryuichi!" a voice snapped him out of his thoughts. He could see Christina waving at him with her beautiful smile across the road.  
  
"Wait right there! I'll be right over!" she yelled over the noise of the traffic.  
  
Ryuichi lowered Lily down onto the pavement and she started to play with Kumagoro, giving an audio commentary as she went.  
  
"I'm pinching but Kumagoro is counterattacking, hey, wow, arrgh!"  
  
Ryuichi smiled as he watched and he heard the crossing button start to beep. Cars stopped at the sight of red and Christina walked out onto the road, keeping her eyes on her family across the road.  
  
A scream of rubber pierced the air and a car came blazing down the road. What happened next was the worst thing of Ryuichi's life, forging itself into his mind, never to leave him, ever.  
  
It was like watching everything in slow motion. The car hit Christina and she went over the bonnet, being flung and rolled over the roof like a rag doll and smashing the windscreen as she went. A red liquid flew through the air along with shards of fibreglass and her ribs were smashed as she hit the boot before crashing to the ground, where she stayed.  
  
"CHRISTINA!" Ryuichi's screamed crazily. His head was a blend of rage, pain and confusion, not prepared to believe what had just happened.  
  
"Oh my God!"  
  
"Someone call an ambulance!"  
  
"Get that child out of here!"  
  
He heard people screaming behind him as he rushed out onto the road, the crowd of concerned divers that had jumped out of their vehicles moving aside.  
  
"Christina! Look, at me, I'm here," he pulled her into his arms and the tears swelled up in his eyes. He could feel that her whole body was broken beneath his hands.  
  
She could no longer speak, but her sapphire eyes conveyed her last word for her.  
  
'Why?'  
  
A wail rang out as the ambulance appeared at the end of the road, bright and load as it wove in and out of the halted traffic. But Ryuichi didn't look away, he couldn't, there was nothing there for him but Christina.  
  
She smiled then, a small silly smile like she could see something that others could not. The ambulance braked loudly in front the scene, but she was dead before they opened their side doors.  
  
It took Ryuichi a minute to realize that her eyes no longer saw him.  
  
He knelt there, transfixed as the paramedics checked her vitals and shook their heads, he could feel them pulling the woman he loved out of his arms, he could hear the murmurs of the crowd around him and he could feel the sudden coldness that ran through his body. But none of it registered in his mind.  
  
"Mate," a paramedic placed a hand on his shoulder. "I'm really sorry, but she's dead."  
  
"Someone help! Something's wrong with the girl! Someone come over here quick!"  
  
Ryuichi looked up and saw Lily having a massive asthma attack on the pavement as the paramedics rushed over to save her, but he himself could do nothing. The same words rolled over in his mind again and again and again.  
  
"She's dead, she's dead she's dead."  
  
**********************************************  
  
"Pack your bags kiddo you're going home," Dr Sullivan said cheerfully as she filled out some forms on her clipboard.  
  
"What the Hell are you saying you crazy woman!" Yuki jumped up and grabbed the doctor by the front of her white jacket. "The girl's half dead and you're letting her go? Where did you get your graduation certificate? Mail order off the Internet?"  
  
"I have drugs in my pockets that will make you think that you're a tropical clownfish living on the Great Barrier Reef for the next year of your life," the doctor warned as Yuki held her tightly. "And I won't be injecting them into your arm either if you know what I mean."  
  
There was a silence in which Lily and Shuichi looked at each other before looking back at the two archenemies staring it out before them.  
  
"Would you really do that?" Yuki asked after a very long pause.  
  
"I have friends in Psyche who would put a chair in front of the fish tank especially for you," she said in a matter of fact tone.  
  
He let go and Dr Sullivan smoothed out all the creases in her white jacket with a satisfied smile before turning back to Lily.  
  
"You're lungs haven't show any fresh signs of bleeding and you've been breathing without any mechanical aid for the past forty-eight hours," she informed her patient and pulled a collection of bottles out of her coat pocket.  
  
"Despite what this bright spark says here," she jerked her head at the sulking man beside her, "if you take all the medication I've prescribed and stay away from strenuous activity for four or so weeks you'll be both hunky and doorie. Oh and no school for two weeks."  
  
"Two weeks!" Lily gasped. "But I'll fail the whole year with an absence record of that! If I'm right I don't think I've been to school since I've been staying with these two."  
  
"Stress less," Dr Sullivan waved her hand carelessly and passed over the armful of medication to Shuichi. "I'll send your school a few papers full of medical jargon with the hospital's logo, and if they still bother you I'll come around with sedatives. So just enjoy your holiday."  
  
"Thanks Doc," Lily said with a sigh. Maybe she could sneak off to school once she was back with Tohma tomorrow, things would be much easier without Yuki watching her like a hawk.  
  
Joan's parents had forced her to go back to school and with Shuichi rehearsing like crazy for the Rock Festival on Saturday, Yuki had become chief visitor.  
  
From nine to five he was there, rushing out suddenly at random parts of the day to go out for a smoke or to go eat. Most of the time he wouldn't bother to say anything to her, just work on his laptop while watching her out of the corner of his eye.  
  
Lily realized that he could have quite easily of stayed at home to do his writing and not bother with her at all. Despite how Yuki acted, and even if he didn't realize it himself, he was a good person.  
  
**********************************************  
  
"I'm sorry I didn't tell you." Shuichi said solemnly as they sat on the couch together at the apartment.  
  
"Midn't mell me mhat?" Lily asked with a mouthful of raisin toast. She had mentally noted that the place no longer smelt of smoke, almost like it had been aired out on purpose.  
  
"About the tour," Shuichi said moving closer to her and looking sincere. "I was going to tell you before the press conference but with you suddenly getting sick like that and with all that went on I just.."  
  
He cut off as his lip quivered and tears started to spring from his eyes. He stopped abruptly though as a cushion thumped him fair in the face.  
  
"Stop that," Lily said firmly. "Don't be sorry for things that aren't your fault. You're a performer and performers perform, it's in the job description. Sure I was upset at first, but after thinking it though I realized the selfish one was me. I just wanted to have you around to keep me company and to hang out together for a bit longer. So don't be sorry."  
  
She nodded and held an air of intelligence and wisdom. It ended when she was knocked off the couch.  
  
"But I am," Shuichi held the other cushion in his hand.  
  
"Don't be," Lily said with a dangerous smile and threw the cushion at him from the floor.  
  
"But I am!" Shuichi grinned broadly as he dodged the flying weapon and jumped down on to the floor.  
  
"Don't be!" Lily squealed with laughter as she tried to stop the cushion attacks.  
  
She kicked Shuichi off and grabbed her cushion, thumping him over the head viciously, grinning as they continued their small game of warfare.  
  
Yuki came out of his study reading the start of his new manuscript while carrying an empty teacup. The two halted suddenly, holding their weapons in mid attack. He looked down on the two playing on the floor with an expression of contempt.  
  
"Childish brats," he muttered and went into the kitchen wondering what kind of a playground he was living in. He refilled his cup and walked back to his workstation, still planning the editing for the papers he held.  
  
Lily glared at the back of his head as he walked past. Her blue eyes watched him, turned to the cushion, back to Yuki and then to Shuichi. She rose her eyebrows and jerked her head at the retreating novelist.  
  
Shuichi smiled broadly and nodded excitedly, the potential danger running through him like electricity. She pulled her arm back over her head, took half a second to aim and swung her arm forward, releasing the cushion into the air.  
  
Since she sucked at all kinds of sports excluding rollerblading, she didn't really expect it to hit him, just to miss him and land in his general area.  
  
But it did.  
  
The feather stuffed package thumped him square in the back of his blonde head before falling to the floor. The impact had jolted his glasses and he'd spilled a bit of tea onto his manuscript.  
  
A heavy air formed in the apartment and nobody said anything, both Shuichi and Lily were too scared to.  
  
After what seemed like a century, Yuki sighed, but his manuscript and tea down on the lamp table beside him and removed his glasses. He closed his eyes and placed the glasses on top of the table before taking a deep breath.  
  
The other two sitting by the couch on the other hand weren't breathing at all.  
  
His eyes flicked open suddenly, blazing gold danger. He picked up the cushion and walked towards his prey.  
  
**********************************************  
  
"No! No! I'm ticklish!"  
  
"I know, that's why I'm doing it!"  
  
"I'm sorry I'm sorry! I'll never do it again!"  
  
"Of course not, you'll be dead!"  
  
Mika and Tohma gawked at each other as they stood outside the apartment door. Hearing Eiri talking like that with someone else was really weird, if not slightly scary.  
  
Tohma turned the doorhandle and stepped into the room.  
  
There on the floor was Eiri, smothering someone with a sofa cushion and Shuichi trying to pull him off. The scene would have looked violent if the two lovers weren't red in the face from laughter and smiling. Tohma could also see that the novelist wasn't pushing very hard on the sofa cushion.  
  
"What is this Eiri?" Mika demanded.  
  
Yuki and Shuichi looked up and their smiles faded. Yuki took the cushion off of Lily's face and his eyes hardened, here were two of the last people that he'd wanted to see.  
  
Lily took deep breaths to cool her red face and was about to lecture the adult on appropriate ways to treat people who had just had an operation on their lungs when she saw the two unwelcomed guests.  
  
The anger the two looked at her with washed away her feeling of joy and she put her hand over Yuki's without realizing it. She was in big trouble.  
  
*********************************************  
  
Lily arrived at school the next morning feeling cold. Not only was snow coving everything within sight, but also by the school rules she had wear her school dress all year round. The idea of complaining to the school committee ran across her mind.  
  
She was spinning her locker lock around when Joan popped up next to her, wearing a bright purple snow jacket and snow pants. She peeled them off to reveal her school dress underneath and stuffed her snow gear into her locker a little harshly.  
  
"I got your text message last night," she said with a sympathetic expression. "Did they chuck a spaz?"  
  
"Oh yea," Lily said grimly and yanked the locker door open. "Mind you, although they yelled when they saw me at the apartment, it wasn't until we went back to their place that they really let it rip."  
  
"How bad is the damage?"  
  
"I'm never to consort in any way with Yuki san ever again," Lily said darkly and slammed the locker shut after grabbing her Japanese History book.  
  
"What a pair of arseholes!" Joan couldn't stop herself. "The two are a perfect match for one another."  
  
"Yes well, just goes to show that even out of hospital my life is still controlled by others. It seems to be the story of my life. But I shouldn't be so rude, Tohma san did take me in when nobody else would."  
  
The bell rang and all of the students put their indoor shoes on and headed to their various classes.  
  
"Are you sure that you're feeling ok?" Joan asked as they made their way up the stairs with the herd of students. "Maybe you shouldn't have come back to school just yet."  
  
"Nah, it's ok," Lily lied.  
  
**********************************************  
  
"Christina!" Ryuichi's head shot up and it took him a minute to remember where he was.  
  
The collection of tables and the drink machine told him that he was in the NG building, nine years after that event. Noriko got back from Aomori today so Tohma had scheduled a rehearsal for Tokyo Bay Music Festival. He'd dozed off before due to the lack of sleep he'd been having the past few nights.  
  
Every time he closed his eyes the image of Lily lying in the hospital bed, pale as the moon and riddled with pain would come up. He rubbed his warm face and picked Kumagoro off of his lap before getting up.  
  
He became aware of another presence that had just come close and turned to see Yuki Eiri standing bedside him, his expression hard and cold.  
  
"Sakuma Ryuichi I presume?"  
  
**********************************************  
  
"I don't think I like Japanese History," Lily said with a sigh and put her head down on the desk.  
  
"Why not?" asked Joan as she put her textbook in her bag and grabbed another one out.  
  
The two of them had the next class in the same room as Japanese History so there was no need to move during the ten minute class break.  
  
"I can't read all the kanji in the textbook," Lily admitted with a yawn. "I much prefer World History because that mostly has Hiragana and Katakana."  
  
"You should really stop getting up so early," Joan preached. "You're going to wear yourself out again."  
  
"I slept for about four years of my life thanks to all the injections in hospital so I'm trying to make up for lost time now. And I lived on a farm for quite a while so really it's just a bad habit."  
  
"A farm?" Joan scrunched up her nose. "I thought your relations were backstabbing millionaires. What were you doing on a farm?"  
  
"When I went to stay with my grandmother we went to live at the farm estate, so if I was seriously sick suddenly she could claim that the ambulance never made it on time. Tell you what, she was really spitting chips when I survived the tree incident with Azrael. Though the bastard did manage to break two of my ribs which punctured my lung-thus causing the long term hospitalisation."  
  
Joan had about a million and one questions she wanted to ask but was deprived of the opportunity when the classroom door flew open to reveal the entire female population of the school.  
  
"Ah! Yuki Eiri sama!" they gasped and admired as they all crowded behind the novelest standing at the door.  
  
The two girls took one look at him and sank in their chairs. He did not look happy.  
  
His blonde hair was all ruffled, his eyes were burning with suppressed anger and they could see his fingers flexing like he wanted to rip something-or someone to shreds. On his face just below his left eye there was a big read mark, like he'd collided with something large and heavy.  
  
"Yuki san what happened to your face?" Lily asked with concern. "It looks like somebody dealt you one." She then gasped and covered her mouth, remembering that she wasn't supposed to talk to him.  
  
He stormed over, grabbed Lily by the back of her school dress and pulled her off her chair. Both she and the chair fell with a clatter and she grabbed her schoolbag with one hand before Yuki dragged her out of reach.  
  
"Hey wait a sec!" Joan yelled standing up at her desk. "You can't just walk in here and do what you want! Leave her alone!"  
  
The novelest looked back at her over his shoulder and Joan sat back down very quickly.  
  
"Forgive my impertinent statement. Continue with your business," she said meekly and buried her head in her textbook in a futile effort to hide.  
  
The fangirls stepped aside making a clear path for their God and his accessory, ignoring the fact that Lily was kicking and screaming to go free.  
  
"Hey hands off! Let go already, I have classes to attend! Don't just stand there you stupid heads! Help me!" she screamed at the rabid fangirls watching her being pulled away.  
  
Yuki dragged her down three flights of stairs and across the front yard before waiting for the lights to change and then dragged her across the road where he threw her in the back seat of the Mercedes.  
  
He slammed the door shut and hopped in the driver's seat, furiously turning the ignition key before speeding off down the street in a cloud of smoke.  
  
"A girl is pulled away by a man kicking and screaming and nobody goes to help, that's just great. If he's good looking he can't possibly be a rapist or murderer, what kind of a philosophy is that? Geez, if this is where society is heading you can count me out," Lily grumbled from the back seat as she inspected all the cuts and grazes she'd received on her legs.  
  
"Quit your whining," Yuki ordered as he blazed through an amber light. "You got nothing more than you deserved."  
  
"Deserved?" Lily scoffed. "What did I do? I was being a good hardworking student and you just barged in and grabbed me!"  
  
"You're not meant to be going to school yet," Yuki said simply.  
  
"Why do you care?" Lily snapped crossing her arms, her bad mood getting worse.  
  
"Just shut up and do as I tell you."  
  
"Why should I?"  
  
"Keep that up and I'll give to you what I gave to your father," he warned glaring in the rear vision mirror.  
  
The clouds of anger that had been floating around her head disappeared and she looked at him wide eyed.  
  
"You know my Dad?"  
  
**********************************************  
  
"YOU HIT HIM!?" Shuichi screamed as Yuki sat on the couch in the dark, watching television while smoking a cigarette.  
  
Shuichi had just got in from a very long day of rehearsal, with his throat about ready to bleed but once he'd heard what his lover had done with his day he'd found a second wind.  
  
Yuki frowned at the banshee voice and looked at Shuichi wearily. He'd been in a bad mood with several people all day so the last thing he needed was to have Shuichi making a big deal out of small details in his town crier voice.  
  
"He deserved it," he said with a small shrug and hoped that would settle he matter  
  
"What did he do to you?"  
  
"Nothing."  
  
"So then why did you start a brawl?" Shuichi sagged down onto the couch and let his head fall of Yuki's shoulder. Much to his surprise he was allowed to stay there.  
  
"I was more or less acting on behalf of another," he said with his eyes focused on the television. "The girl has lost faith in him and is angry with him for leaving her alone, even if she wont admit it openly. He has been hiding behind his career all of this time because he's afraid to confront her. He needed to wake up to himself, so I woke him up."  
  
Shuichi lifted his head and looked at his lover with confused tired eyes.  
  
"Are you saying that you did it because you care about Lily chan?"  
  
"Your stupidity grows with every passing day," Yuki grunted and decided that the conversation was closed.  
  
**********************************************  
  
"You're the bestist friend in the whole wide world!" Joan squealed and hugged Lily tightly.  
  
"Is 'bestist' a real word?" Lily asked with a smile as she was pushed across the park bench by Joan's weight.  
  
"I can't believe you got tickets!" Joan ignored her question and sat up again to gaze lovingly at her exclusive backstage pass and ticket to Tokyo Bay Music Festival. "I guess it really pays to make friends on international flights. It's a shame that Artemis had to miss this though."  
  
"You kidding?" Joan received an 'are you stupid' look from her friend. "Can you imagine how many people he would grope if he was in a crowd of over five hundred? He'd have a field day."  
  
"Good point," Joan admitted and acknowledged Lily with her index finger.  
  
It was Friday morning and Lily had waited in the park bundled up in thick jackets and scarves for Joan who was on her regular walk to school.  
  
Yesterday she'd spent the entire day ironing Yuki's clothes and scrubbing his bathroom with Shuichi's toothbrush. Lily wasn't sure which had been worse, the punishment or the fact that Yuki had put so much effort into thinking it up.  
  
Mind you, she had gone and bought Shuichi a new toothbrush before he'd gotten home.  
  
"Hey can you confirm a rumour for me?" Joan asked excitedly bouncing up and down on the bench.  
  
"I suppose," Lily sighed, preparing for the worst.  
  
"Is it true that Yuki Eiri sama hates celery?"  
  
"Go to school!" Lily groaned painfully. Only Joan could ever bother investigating the eating habits of someone famous.  
  
"You're not coming?"  
  
"After what happened yesterday I thick I should play it safe," Lily said with a sigh of defeat. "Today I'm apparently cleaning the oven. Maybe Yuki san has plans to turn the gas on while my head's shoved in it to make it look like suicide."  
  
"Would he really do that?" Joan's eyes grew wider than her glasses.  
  
Lily placed her hand on her friend's shoulder and gave her a comforting smile.  
  
"Joan my dear, you are quite possibly the most innocent and naive person I have ever met. Please stay that way."  
  
"Ok. Bye Bye!" Joan cried perkily and set off down the path at a run.  
  
"Don't forget to get my homework for me!" Lily cried after her and watched her go until she was just a dot in the distance.  
  
'Well, even if Shuichi, Hiro, Fujisaki and the others go, I'll still have Joan. And Yuki san too.'  
  
She shook her head to try remove that last stupid thought. Yuki wasn't really a friend she could console in, well he wasn't even really a friend at all when she thought about it. He was, well, an acquaintance at most.  
  
Thinking of that particular acquaintance reminded her that she had to go to the market to get things off the shopping list Yuki had written just for her.  
  
'Jerk.'  
  
**********************************************  
  
"200 Yen! 200 Yen for a kilo of peaches! You should call yourself 'Bloodthirsty money hungry scrooge' because that's what you are!" Noriko stood in the front of a very nervous line of people as she yelled insult after insult at a green grocer who had now decided to never stock peaches ever again.  
  
The purple haired mother continued to express he rather vocal opinions until the green grocer proclaimed her fruit as a gift, which much to his relief got rid of her.  
  
She regretted having not grabbed a jacket before she left the house that morning and wondered if she should go buy one before she got a taxi over to the beach where the final rehearsals were going to take place. If Ryuichi and Tohma could show up late whenever they wanted couldn't she?  
  
Taking care not to slip on the icy pavement she walked through the tents and stalls of fresh foods thinking about which jacket she'd seen in her fashion magazine and was going to buy.  
  
'Shopping hasn't been the same since she left,' a little voice said in her ear.  
  
Noriko thought of how nice it would have been to be able to go shopping with that particular person now that she could actually buy all the clothes she wanted. Before all the two of them had been able to do was to window shop and circle all of the designer labels in magazines. And that's how it was going to stay, frozen in time.  
  
'You can't live in the past Noriko,' her mind reasoned with her. 'One Grasper is and look at what's happened to him.'  
  
For a second Noriko thought that she was living in the past. She saw the sight in front of her and wondered if it could possibly be real. She was almost too afraid to breathe, thinking that it would disappear if the slightest thing changed.  
  
"Special on snow peas today only."  
  
"No thankyou, he only gave me enough money to get the groceries on the list."  
  
'Christina?'  
  
The eyes were Christina's. The body structure was Christina's as was the face. The hair was...no.  
  
Seeing the thick brown ponytail made the jumpy feeling in her stomach stop. She was her mother in almost every aspect, but the hair made Noriko think of the lead singer she knew well.  
  
Nine years later here she was, the little girl that Ryuichi had left behind at the airport and had thought about every day since then, standing three feet in front of her buying vegetables.  
  
"Lily?"  
  
The girl looked up with surprise to see the woman with two purple pigtails trembling slightly, looking as though she was holding back tears. Yet there was something about her that seemed familiar, as strange as it was, it was the same feeling that she got around Tohma.  
  
She walked up to her wanting to say something but she didn't know where to start. This girl looked so much like Christina that it hurt and a memory was playing in her head, taking her away from the present moment.  
  
Ryuichi was on his knees in front of a white tombstone with his hands covering his red and tear soaked face. Noriko held Lily in her arms as the four-year-old slept soundly on her shoulder, the funeral having sapped her of all her energy.  
  
Tohma stood on the other side of their grief stricken friend and spoke the only words of comfort he could think of.  
  
"She's in a better place Ryuichi."  
  
"Where could she be happier than with her daughter and lover?" he'd wept.  
  
It was then, as the two friends watched the singer crumble to pieces with sorrow and heartache that they made a promise. A silent promise that neither ever had to verbally agree on.  
  
They would look after Ryuichi and Lily, protect them and ensure that they'd never feel this kind of pain again.  
  
"You never had time to see," Noriko muttered and touched Lily's pale face, "how life was like with your Mum and Dad did you baby?"  
  
"Sorry but I think you're confused. You don't know me," Lily said feeling very awkward. She saw by looking in the woman's eyes that she wasn't there any more, but lost in her own memories and feelings.  
  
Noriko smiled and shook her head a little bit. She reached into her bag, pulling out a peach and dropped it in Lily's outstretched palm.  
  
"Of course I know who you are kiddo," Noriko patted her on the head. "You're Ryuichi's girl."  
  
"What!?"  
  
Lily was left feeling amazed and breathless as the woman walked off humming the song Joan had played her in their double bludge.  
  
What had it been called again? Oh yea, Sleepless Beauty. It was a strange name, but for some reason it felt familiar.  
  
'The weirdos just keep coming.' **********************************************  
  
"Take your share first Lily chan before Shuichi scoffs it all," Hiro said with a smile that turned Lily to goo.  
  
"Hey I find that insulting!" Shuichi whined with a pout.  
  
The three of them were sitting around a large pizza on the floor of Hiro's apartment. Shuichi had arrived home that afternoon to find Lily separating the rubbish and recycling in the kitchen bin and had decided to liberate her.  
  
"Don't you two ever invite Fujisaki san to things like this?" Lily asked as she put two slices on her paper plate.  
  
"Well we would," Hiro said reaching for his share, "but he's more, how could I say- articulate than the two of us."  
  
"Whaddya mean?" Shuichi had half a slice of pizza hanging out of his mouth with cheese oozing onto the carpet as he spoke.  
  
"Need I say more?" he asked his admirer with an amused smile.  
  
Lily looked down at her socks to stop herself from laughing. She sure was going to miss being around Shuichi, even if it was for only for four months. The bright haired adult had the ability to make her happy without meaning to.  
  
"Did Shuichi give you your tickets yesterday Lily chan?" Hiro whipped his hands on his napkin. "We were meaning to get them to you and Joan chan sooner but things have been rush-rush at the studio with rehearsals."  
  
"Yea I gave Joan hers this morning. Are you exited about tomorrow? I know I am, I just can't wait to hear the new song!" Lily clapped her hands together with a smile.  
  
Tomorrow looked promising.  
  
**********************************************  
  
Hikaru: Only two more to go guys! I'm so excited though I'm sure that I should be since I'm the writer.......oh well I guess it shows I'm having fun. Thanks for all the tips and reviews and thankyou so much again for all your patience thus far.  
  
I know that Yuki is a bit out of character here but I really wanted to try and get the relationship between him and Lily across, though I'm not sure if I've really achieved it.  
  
I've also noticed that the timeframe might be a little bit off these past few chapters but since it would cause to much trouble to go back and fix it, I'm not going to worry about it-so neither should you. *nods and smiles* (Thank you Austin Powers.)  
  
I have two English SACs (School Assessed Course work) this week so there might be a small delay with the next chapter.  
  
Have faith in me! Bye for now. 


	18. Chapter Eighteen

"I really think that Artemis had a point," Joan shivered and pulled her jacket around her tighter. "This isn't exactly concert weather."  
  
"Call yourself a Bad Luck fan?" Lily said in mock disgust as they walked over the harbour bridge together.  
  
"Why did you turn down Shuichi offer for a lift in Heaven's name?" Joan's boots sloshed though what was left of yesterday's snow. "We'll end up being Bad Luck's most dedicated popstickles before we even get there."  
  
Lily sighed and gave the same answer to the same question her friend had asked fifty times in the past half-hour.  
  
"Because," she said slightly irritated. "If we are seen arriving with the internationally successful band Bad Luck we will have our faces plastered all over the tabloids tomorrow morning. Remember what happened after I filled in for Fujisaki san?"  
  
"Oh," Joan nodded her head vigorously. "I see you've really thought things through."  
  
Her face then took on a catty expression and her eyes gave a flicker that meant that she was looking for trouble.  
  
"So does Yuki san know where you're going today?"  
  
"What's he got to do with anything?" Lily asked giving her a warning look sideways.  
  
"Well, nothing I guess. It's just that after the way he showed up at school the other day and with all those hours he spent with you at the hospital I would have thought that you being in a crowd of over 10,000 might have made him a touch concerned about his precious asset."  
  
"You," Lily held up her index finger in a dangerous fashion, "are walking on very thin ice with a really big shark underneath."  
  
Joan sniggered to herself and her pace picked up when she spotted the stage coming into view through the dark clouds that covered the horizon.  
  
"We're nearly there!" she said and momentarily forgot about how she couldn't feel her toes any more. "Hurry up before all the plebs nab all the front spots."  
  
"Hold your horses," Lily said and reached into her jacket. "I just need to do something."  
  
They were nearly at the end off the bridge now with cars whizzing past them filled with youths eager to see some rock stars and get boozed up. Below them the water of Tokyo Bay ravaged and raged mercilessly.  
  
Lily pulled out a large velvet box and held it out over the rail. The wind pulled at her air and stung her face a bit as she leaned over the railing ever so slightly. Then with a smile she released the box.  
  
Joan hurried over to see the velvet box fall down, down, down until it hit the water below. It was visible on the surface for half a second before the waves devoured it, swallowing it into the deep.  
  
"Was that jewellery?" Joan asked totally flabbergasted.  
  
"Yep," Lily said casually and put her hands back in her jacket pockets. "I decided that it meant nothing to me."  
  
Joan took one more fleeting look over the edge before catching up to Lily's retreating figure.  
  
"So you just threw it away?"  
  
"Yep," she simply said with a nod. Joan didn't know what to say but she got the feeling that she was missing a few finer details, just like the rest of the time.  
  
"Well you could have just used the trash bash."  
  
"Now everyone please do your best out there today. This is very important so you can give the tour a good start and to rope new fans in. Shindo kun are you sure you're confident with all the new lyrics? Fujisaki kun you don't need Nickson san to hack into a database for music do you? Please don't do anything strange this time Shindo kun and don't..."  
  
"Sakano san!" the three musicians yelled together. Their producer's nerves were a mess as they walked from their trailer on the sand to the stage.  
  
"Don't worry about the song Sakano san," Shuichi said with a bright smile. "Even though the lyrics aren't quite up to my literary genius I'm sure it will go fine."  
  
"What literary genius?" Fujisaki hissed to the guitarist.  
  
Hiro held up his hand to silence him and let out a small sigh.  
  
"Let's just be thankful that Lily chan gave him the song this time round. I don't think I could manage another slump like at last year's festival," he whispered behind his hand.  
  
With a final warning from their ever so persuasive manager they left him and a shaking Sakano san backstage as they greeted a mass of adoring fans.  
  
The screams were deafening and the goosebumps on Shuichi's exposed stomach disappeared thanks to the large collection of stage lights focused on him.  
  
"Hi everyone!" Shuichi called out to the people in the far back though the microphone. "Are you all having fun?"  
  
He took the roar from the crowd as a yes.  
  
"Today, before Bad Luck starts their tour," he waited for the screaming to die down before he continued talking. "We will sing to you our new song! Take it away Fujisaki!"  
  
The intro had hardly started when the singer turned around to his band mates screaming at them to stop, waving his microphone up and down in the air.  
  
"Wait a sec wait a sec!" he turned back to the crowd panic stricken. "Where's Lily chan? I want her to be here if I'm going to sing! This is her mother's song here!"  
  
Backstage someone tensed up and his companions looked at one another with worried expressions. However he wasn't the only one Shuichi was effecting.  
  
"SHINDO KUN!" Sakano screamed pulling at his hair with tears bursting from his eyes. K took careful aim with his gun and the crowd was at a standstill. Hiro and Fujisaki just sighed in unison and slumped over their instruments.  
  
It didn't matter how many times Shuichi performed, something like this would always happen. Always.  
  
Thunk.  
  
A white runner hit the stage and bounced across the platform before stopping near Shuichi. He blinked a few times before picking the shoe up and walked to the edge of the stage holding it.  
  
After a few seconds of scanning the crowd he could see almost right below him Lily and Joan waving to him, their backstage passes hanging around their necks and red in the face from laughing.  
  
"Oh there you are! Ok I guess I can sing now."  
  
The crowd agreed with that notion and Shuichi rubbed the back of his head with an embarrassed laugh. He threw the shoe down to his friend and gave Fujisaki a nod.  
  
For the second time a simple yet catchy tune came from the keyboards and Hiro made his presence clear. As the intro played Shuichi kept his eyes closed and thought. Thought about the song and the one he loved the most to give it the extra shine it needed.  
  
"Just one thing doesn't change That dream I painted How did I appear as I am now In my young eyes back then Hey, look up at it, it's such a vast night sky So that soon, so that you understand You will shine at your best soon so hurry Look for the FULL MOON  
  
Let's sing a song! Together forever Everything I can do for you right now Day by day Your destiny until now From tomorrow, clutch your hopes to your chest Let's sing a song! Together forever If I'm with you I can overcome any hardship More and more More and more and more I want to be closer Please stay right here Many thanks for you!  
  
Wonderous chance meetings As long as they keep happening We have ever more precious things All those days full of chance mischief Now I can laugh and love them That's right, I always yearned for the wide stage Now I'm no longer alone Everyone is full of smiles Because this is where I am  
  
Let's sing a song Tonight, rather than the spotlight, it's me that will shine now Day by day Those passionate looks and cheers shine upon my streaming sweat Let's sing a song Tonight I want to believe there are never ending burning thoughts More and more More and more and more I want to scream this song, this dream will never end  
  
Let's sing a song! Repeat and repeat Let's sing a song! Repeat and repeat  
  
This is the song for you"  
  
The song finished and the lights on stage went out, preventing the audience from seeing anything on stage. However the microphones were still on so they all heard Shuichi trip over a cord and start to cry.  
  
"That was pretty good!" Joan yelled over the crowd's cheers. "It was a bit different to his regular style but he pulled it off quite nicely considering that he hadn't written it himself. Don't you think so Lily?"  
  
Lily hadn't heard her at all. She was still smiling up at the stage, not sure wether to run backstage to hug Shuichi or to just cry out of happiness right there and then.  
  
'Mum must have really loved someone to write a song like that. Thankyou for letting her shine one last time Shuichi.'  
  
"Hey snap out of it!" she felt something thump her in the arm and she jumped in surprise.  
  
"What?" she asked completely bewildered. It was like being woken up from an intense dream when you're really tired.  
  
"He sang that really well didn't he?" Joan now demanded an answer after being ignored.  
  
"Yea, I don't even think Yuki san could criticise that. Oh wait........yes he could."  
  
"Ah Shindo kun that was beautiful," a very frail and very relieved Sakano sang as he floated around the group.  
  
Hiro had Shuichi in a headlock while they laughed. If you ignored the little slip up at the end and the panic attack at the start, it was their only performance where Shuichi hadn't given the press a new bone to gnaw on.  
  
"That was very well done."  
  
"Boss!"  
  
Hiro let go and they saw the three members of Nittle Grasper standing in front of them. Ryuichi held no visible expression and Shuichi felt for the first time a sense of worry regarding the song.  
  
Was Ryuichi angry that he'd sung one of his lover's songs? A love song that was probably about him or his daughter. Lily had given it to him for the festival but did that really mean that it had been ok to use? Had he been allowed to express someone else's feeling of love?  
  
"That was cool Shuichi!" he grinned giving the thumbs up.  
  
Shuichi nearly melted with relief and tried to pretend he didn't notice the fading bruise on Ryuichi's right cheek.  
  
"Nah, nah, it was these guys, I just sang while Hiro and Fujisaki played. It was their achievement actually. And it was Christina who saved the day really, with her talent with lyrics," Shuichi tried to throw the praise off but Ryuichi continued to smile.  
  
"Nope, nope na no da. Christina wrote it but the rest was all you, she'd be happy with you!"  
  
The actor who was hosting the concert called out the next performance and there was a cry from the audience.  
  
"Time to go Ryuichi!" Norio commanded and gave the vocalist a push in the back.  
  
He let out a deep sigh and put a baseball cap and a pair of sunglasses on.  
  
"Lily chan is out there right?" his voice was now deep and serious, his happy mood forgotten under the pressure that had now been placed on him.  
  
"Yes," the younger singer said and saddened. Would Ryuichi ever tell her the truth?  
  
"Christina would be happy with you Shuichi," he said as he followed his two band mates up the stage stairs. "But I wonder if she'd be happy with me."  
  
"Everyone please welcome Japan's most loved band, Nittle Grasper!" the host called out like a ringmaster and slinked off stage. The lights went out once more to leave the audience in suspense.  
  
"Hey are these the guys who sang that Sleepless Beauty song?" Lily yelled over the noise of the people around her.  
  
"Hella yea! I can't believe you don't know them, you, who has the nerve to call me clueless," Joan didn't turn to her but kept her eyes on the stage in anticipation.  
  
"Well it's strange because I'm sure I know the name and music but I can't...."  
  
The lights came on stage and the roar of the crowd trampled Lily's voice. She looked up and nearly had a heart attack.  
  
There was Tohma on the keyboards and opposite him on the other keyboard was the woman Lily had seen in the market yesterday. In between them stood a man in denim and a black and white T-shirt, his face concealed by a pair of sunglasses and a hat.  
  
'I knew Tohma still played but I didn't expect anything like this,' she thought with wonder. 'And there's that crazy lady that knows my Dad's name! What in God's name is going on?'  
  
The singer gave no introduction or gave a greeting to the crowd. In all honesty he looked like he would rather be sitting in a dentist's chair then on stage. Much to the surprise of the keyboard players he turned and requested something.  
  
"Sleepless Beauty please," he held his hand over the microphone, confusing the audience with his hold up.  
  
"But Ryu chan," Noriko stared in disbelief, "we have a whole new song lined up for this performance. Why do want to sing Sleepless Beauty all of a sudden?"  
  
"Please Noriko, Tohma."  
  
His voice was serious and Tohma thought he heard a note of fear escape his throat. The green eyes that were usually filled with hidden danger filled with sympathy for his friend and knew that it was time.  
  
He nodded to Noriko and she turned back to her keyboard. She would have to do this, whether it was the right time or not.  
  
Neither of them could bring back Christina-no one could, but they could try to reforge a bond that had been broken long ago. The only problem was, it could go two ways.  
  
A well revised and forever popular tune came from their keyboards and Ryuichi counted himself in. It was time to tell.  
  
"Oh this is such a jib!" Joan cried and stomped the sand angrily like a small child. "I was expecting something new! I want a refund dammit!"  
  
"You didn't pay for this in the first place," Lily muttered more to herself than to Joan.  
  
From far away, let your eyes shine; those who have awakened are still waiting. Seduce the ramparts of the night in the cast-off pile of skins left by things that now live elsewhere.  
  
'I'm sorry Christina, I left her alone because I was scared. Scared that the only person I love wouldn't love me in return, or that I'd loose her like I'd lost you.'  
  
(without an exit) if you intend to survive the impact (to the point where you fall apart) enrapture the deceits  
  
"Lily what's wrong?" Joan caught sight of her friend watching the performance with her face paler than cream.  
  
You who have been reborn, colour your eyes without smiling alone. Even if the world you've longed for has suddenly burned to ash, in some miracle we could still brush into each other.  
  
"K what is he going to do?" Shuichi asked the performer's ex-manager as he watched Ryuichi on stage. His singing and style was extraordinary as usual, but Shuichi had a bad feeling.  
  
"I don't know."  
  
(Hold me gently in order to break me)  
  
'I hate this feeling, I want to remember it but I just can't. It's like part of my life never happened. I want to know but I don't know if I can handle it,' Lily couldn't look away, this song and this man were somehow a clue to her own identity.  
  
Be exposed in a state of purity like a flower whose petals have fallen. You're just beginning to notice the days are shining jewels cupped in your hand.  
  
Ryuichi reflected on the day Yuki had hit him at the NG building, remembering the throbbing pain in his cheek and knuckles as he was knocked to the ground.  
  
"She's all you have and you left her alone for nine years! If this was anyone other then her you'd be hated for it. You should have been the one to nearly drown in your own blood because it's no more then what you deserve."  
  
Yuki's fingers touched under his eye and stormed off, leaving the elder man feeling ashamed and alone.  
  
(A cold hand) gathers up the shed thorns, so (A banked flame) continues to smoulder  
  
'Do you remember me at all Lily chan? I don't know that even your mother would, I've changed so much. It's almost like I've become someone else.'  
  
Let's depict the vividly dancing thoughts found in that place of light that is unreachable even now. Don't fear the passage of time, so that words of guidance won't completely spill out and flow away.  
  
Noriko watched her friend dance at the front of the stage through salty tears. She'd promised that she'd never let them get hurt again, but now it seemed as though that child was going to have to go through painful things again.  
  
To the reincarnation of you, I say colour your eyes without smiling alone. Even if the world you've longed for has suddenly burned to ash, the miracle could still happen to come again.  
  
'It's now or never,' Ryuichi reached up to his face and took a breath for the final lyrics.  
  
Let's depict the vividly dancing thoughts found in that place of light that is unreachable even now. Don't fear the passage of time, so that words of guidance won't completely spill out and flow away.  
  
The threat of tears pickled in Lily's eyelids as a thought ran across her mind.  
  
(Hold me gently, always catch me, more and more, in order to break my heart)  
  
'It can't be,' she thought fearfully as the singer pulled the sunglasses and hat off of him, throwing them across the stage without a thought or care.  
  
"Lily chan! Dad is over here!" he cried out, smiling as sweat ran down his body.  
  
His brown bangs fell over his bright blue eyes and his handsome face made Lily stagger back-he hadn't aged a day in nine years.  
  
Then everything on stage blacked out.  
  
"Lily? What? You? No! But hang on," Joan was a mess as she tried to comprehend what she had just heard.  
  
Surely, Sakuma Ryuichi couldn't be referring to her friend Lily, he couldn't be her Dad, he must be yelling to another Lily! She laughed to herself and turned to share the joke with her friend.  
  
Where she'd been standing beside her moments earlier had now been filled by other concert goers, trying their best to get closer to their idols.  
  
"Lily? Where did you go? Come back!"  
  
"No-no way," Shuichi breathed, not prepared to accept what Ryuichi had just done. Had he really just revealed himself to Lily in front of hundreds of strangers and all her friends?  
  
Why would he put her in that position? He was meant to love her so why would he something so cruel? It didn't make any sense to him.  
  
The three band members came down the stairs, Noriko wiping freshly spilt tears away from her puffy face. Tohma was expressionless but his eyes told that he was contemplating something that he might or might not share.  
  
Ryuichi however was a bouncing ball of energy that couldn't wait for Lily to run into his arms as he came backstage, there was so much to catch up on.  
  
Shuichi's shocked face then twisted with anger, infuriated by how Ryuichi didn't see his stupidity or the backlash that was yet to come.  
  
"You," he started but was cut off.  
  
"Shuichi!" Joan screamed his name panic stricken as she sprinted over the collection or artists. "She's gone!"  
  
"What?" he gasped and stopped her before she crashed into him. He clasped his gloved hands on her thin shoulders as she caught her breath.  
  
"Tell me everything Joan."  
  
Everyone crowded around the two, attracted to the feeling of urgency emitting from Lily's closest friends.  
  
"She was with me until the song ended and I tried to look for her but I couldn't get though the crowd! I thought that she might be with you so came back here," she gasped as she panicked.  
  
Bile rose in Ryuichi's throat as he heard what the girl with pigtails said. He swallowed hard and ran away from his friends, ignoring the voices calling him back.  
  
Lily lent over the bin outside a closed beach kiosk and threw up. Every time she thought of the sunglasses coming off of his face she was overcome with nausea.  
  
'I'd never thought that Dad would be anyone like that,' she thought as she wiped the watery substance away from her face with the back of her hand. 'But that isn't why I ran.'  
  
Long buried memories had been dug up just from looking at his face, like a dam that had burst to flood through a city of thought.  
  
Wobbling a little she walked away from the bin, making her way up the sand hills to reach the main road. Raindrops began to fall from the thick dark sky and they mixed in with the water already running down her face.  
  
"Goodbye Lily, Daddy will be back for you. Just as soon as Uncle Tohma sorts some work out ok?"  
  
'That's what he told me, so why didn't he do what he said? Why did he leave me alone for all that time? Was it because he hates me?'  
  
She shivered as she thought of that and picked up her pace, she wanted to get as far away from the concert as she could.  
  
It all made sense now-the curious interest in her relationship with her father, the missing CDs from Tohma's rack, the awkward pauses and constant changes of conversation. This had been what they'd been covering up all this time.  
  
All of them had known, Tohma, Shuichi, Hiro, K, Yuki, all but her and Joan. She wanted to be with her right then, wanted to be with someone that didn't keep secrets from her or lied. But Joan was back there with them, and she couldn't turn around and go back there.  
  
Would they laugh at her? Maybe.  
  
She was at the road now, cars blazing past with their high beams on to see through the rain and splashing water up as they drove through puddles.  
  
Lily saw a yellow and green checked car coming her way and she stretched her hand out. It slowed down and halted on the kerb in front of her. With a final glace back at the stage where millions were gathered, she hopped in the back seat, the warmth of the car defrosting her hands a little bit.  
  
"Where to love?" the driver asked, looking at the girl with her arms wrapped herself and trying to stop crying.  
  
"I don't care, just away from here," Lily whispered and averted her attention to the fogged up window, trying to push out the image of the smiling face on stage.  
  
"No, wait a second, I know where."  
  
"Lily! Lily!" Ryuichi yelled as he ran across the beach, frozen to the bone and his throat sore.  
  
"Come back! I'm sorry!" he spun around, praying that he would see her standing behind him or walking over a nearby dune.  
  
His boot slipped on the sloshy ground beneath him and he fell face first into the wet sand. He didn't get up, he just lay there for a moment thinking, before he let out a heavy sob.  
  
Tears ran down his face as he dug his hand into the sand, clutching a handful of grains, assorted shells and leaf litter.  
  
"I'm such a fool," he sobbed as he squeezed his eyes shut.  
  
A tune began to play over his cries and he stopped for half a second, wondering where it was coming from. When he realized that it was his mobile phone in his pocket he didn't bother to answer it. He wanted to be with only one person now.  
  
But it rang and it rang and it rang. Ryuichi's sobs and the electronic tune were all that could be heard over the rising waves of the bay and the rain that cut though his skin like falling sewing pins.  
  
Slowly he rolled onto his back, wet sand sticking to his clothes and skin as he reached for his pants, keeping his eyes on the lonely grey sky above.  
  
With a careless flick the top came open and he hit a button with his thumb. He sniffed to hold back another sob as he held the phone to his ear.  
  
"Ryuichi it's me," it was Tohma. "Where are you? What's going on?"  
  
"I'm a fool Tohma. I wanted to show Lily who I was doing what I love, singing the song that her mother wrote for me long ago. I didn't think that she would run off like that," another sob escaped his throat. "She's scared of me Tohma, I've lost both of them now."  
  
On the other end Tohma listened to his friend cry in despair, his thoughts taking him back to the day at Christina's tombstone. Noriko had a concerned hand squeezing his shoulder as she strained to hear the phone call.  
  
"Ryuichi listen to me," he said with a stern tone. "You can't change the past, but you can do something with the present."  
  
"I can't find her Tohma!" Ryuichi cried, his hand covering his blue eyes as he lay on his back. "I looked everywhere in the crowd and all over the beach. I didn't think that she could get far because she can't breathe well when she runs, but she's not here. What do I do?"  
  
Shuichi pushed Tohma roughly on the shoulder, not out of dislike or anger, but out of importance and urgency.  
  
"Seguchi san," he held out his gloved hand for the phone. "I think I know where she might be going."  
  
"Will you be right here love?" the driver asked with a little concern as stuck his head out the window.  
  
"Yea, thanks," Lily said softly and the car drove off behind her.  
  
She stood looking up at the building and wondered, not at its architectural brilliance but at why it was exactly that she'd returned there.  
  
It the taxi she had thought about going straight to the airport, withdrawing some money from her account and getting on the next plane heading to America.  
  
But what would have been the purpose of that? She wouldn't have been welcomed by anyone other than Artemis and he would have told her to go home and face her problems. He never had been a big one for running away.  
  
America never had been home, it was where she had been born, where her mother had been born and died, where she had stayed with her grandmother and where she'd been in hospital. But in thirteen years she'd never really felt like she'd belonged.  
  
So what did that make Japan? Was here her home? Did she belong here with Shuichi, Joan and Yuki? Or was she just really an accessory for them to carry around? Why did she even come at all? To live with Tohma and hang out with aspiring rock stars had never been part of the initial plan.  
  
'I came to see him,' Lily admitted to herself. 'And I came back to NG because this is where I could be with someone that liked me for me, just like Artemis had done. This is where I had felt.....at home.'  
  
"Lily chan."  
  
Lily looked up to see Ryuichi standing all but three meters beside her, panting and drenched through like her. His puffing made small clouds of mist and they stared at each other, neither of them knowing what to say.  
  
Here they were, after being estranged for nine years, finally meeting. Each of them over the years had developed a list of what they had wanted to say at this moment, but it was all forgotten.  
  
"I.....I'm," Ryuichi started to move closer and Lily's left heel moved back a step. She could see that he was crying like she was, but she didn't want him to get any closer. She was afraid of him, though she didn't quite know why.  
  
Everything inside of him screamed at him to just run up and hug her, never to let go. When he looked at her he saw the woman he had loved, but also himself as well. To a stranger she might have been classed as pretty but plain, but to him she was simply beautiful.  
  
He moved a little closer and held out his hand. Lily looked at his face, then his hand, and with a sob of fear, ran out onto the road. This was too much to handle after nine years of silence. Tears blinded her, stopping her from seeing the oncoming traffic.  
  
She froze as a car's headlights threw themselves over her and the tyres screamed as they slid and swerved all over the road.  
  
A terrible feeling of de ja vu swam over Ryuichi as he watched the car come closer and closer, Lily frozen by the lights.  
  
"No!"  
  
Hikaru's say: I know you'll all hate me, but don't you think this is a fantastic place to leave a cliffhanger? Anyway, so sorry this took ages to write but as you all know, last week before the Easter holidays teachers suddenly remember all the work they should have given you earlier that's due before end of term. (Throws another dart at the dartboard with photos of various teachers on it.)  
  
Anyway, to clear a little something up, Lily did go back to Tohma's but has to spend her days off school at Yuki's so she can't do anything he doesn't like until she's fully recovered.  
  
Another disclaimer is for the song Shuichi sings. I can't write songs or any form of poetry for peanuts so I used a translation for a song called New Future from the anime Full Moon wo Sagashite. I know it might look a little corny to read about Shuichi singing it but it really is a good song to any anime collection and consider yourself lucky that you weren't subjected to some of my poetry which would have left you screaming in pain.  
  
Both song translations are from www.animelyrics.com.  
  
Of course I don't own Gravitation.  
  
Hope you liked this chapter (only one more to go!) and don't forget to review. Bye. 


	19. Chapter Nineteen

The car sped off down the wet street, horn blaring and the driver shouting angry comments through the window. On the pavement opposite the NG building Ryuichi lay, his arms wrapped protectively around his daughter.  
  
In his right hand he held a puffer to Lily's mouth as she tried to get her breathing back to a regular pace while his left hand hang limply over her ribcage, bruised and swelling up with each passing second.  
  
As he whispered soft words of encouragement to her, the last few seconds of his life played over in his mind like a cinema reel.  
  
Lily froze as a car's headlights threw themselves over her and the tyres screamed as they slid and swerved all over the road. A terrible feeling of de ja vu swam over Ryuichi as he watched the car come closer and closer, Lily frozen by the lights.  
  
"No!" he screamed and without another thought, bolted out onto the road, right into the car's path.  
  
With the skill of a professional rugby player he'd grabbed Lily around the waist and pushed her out of the way, the impact of their collision throwing them across the road and crashing onto the pavement opposite.  
  
There'd been a snap as his wrist twisted under him when they hit the cement and Lily began wheezing, panic and fear feeding her attack. Without a thought for his own injury he'd helped her get her Ventolin out of her pocket and began coaxing her back to a regular breathing pattern.  
  
Lily held up her hand, stopping Ryuichi from placing the puffer between her lips again. Her breaths weren't as loud now and the Ventolin had opened up her airways, allowing her to breathe once more. With rain drops splashing on her face she slowly took control of her breathing, thinking of nothing else but that.  
  
Ryuichi carefully helped her sit up, his right hand placed on her back in a protective and supportive gesture.  
  
"You saved me," she murmured without looking at him, her hair had come loose from her ponytail and hid her face. "Why?"  
  
"What do you mean?" Ryuichi thought that she was mad to be asking such a question. "Isn't it obvious?"  
  
"No," Lily sniffed, "it's not obvious. It can't be because you care about me, because you don't."  
  
"That's not true I...."  
  
"Left me," Lily lifted her head to reveal the hurt in her eyes. "You left me for nine years. You didn't care what happened to me at all!"  
  
Ryuichi lost the weak composure he had tried building in those previous few seconds. He couldn't deny that he'd left her nor deny that it had been selfish of him.  
  
"I did leave, but I did it for you," his eyes pleaded for her to understand. "I wasn't able to save Christina but I thought that if I could make something of myself I could give you a better life. But everyday was another day up hill to make it in the music industry. Every single day I thought about quitting and going back to get you. But each time I reminded myself that if I went back I'd have nothing to give you, I'd of accomplished nothing."  
  
Lily didn't interrupt him or look away, all she had to do was look at him to know that every word was true.  
  
"The weeks turned into months and the months into years. Even after I'd achieved my dream with Grasper and we'd disbanded, I still wanted to see you so badly."  
  
"Why didn't you?" Lily asked grasping a handful of wet leather on his leg with her small hand, desperate to hear more. "Why didn't you come back then?"  
  
"I was too afraid," he swallowed hard to keep the lump in his throat down. "By then you were ten and in the long term ward, how would I have known what to say to you when so much had changed around you? It would have killed me to see you in such a place and not be able to do anything, the same as it felt when Christina died."  
  
Fresh tear started to fall from his blue eyes but he had to keep going, if he didn't get himself across now it would never happen.  
  
"What if I had come back and you said you didn't want anything to do with me? What if I had come back and you hated me for my betrayal? I'd loose the person I love most and I couldn't live through that again. I had to accomplish what I had set out to do so I could come back to you and you'd have a dad that was worth something."  
  
Tears ran freely down his face and with his right hand he tried to wipe them away, crying wouldn't get him anywhere.  
  
"I'm sorry Lily chan I was wasn't strong enough. I'm a failure as a father."  
  
A movement next to him then diverted his attention.  
  
Lily crawled over to him and wrapped her arms around his neck, burying her face in his shoulder. Ryuichi froze as she rested her weight on his lap and squeezed him to an almost unsafe point.  
  
"I didn't want a life full of fame and fortune," she croaked as she too started to cry again. "I wanted you."  
  
Ryuichi wrapped his right arm around her and pulled her close, as his left lay beside him completely useless.  
  
Around them the rain continued to fall.  
  
Ryuichi's head felt heavy and hazy, like he was lost in a snowstorm in Tibet with a compass that didn't have a north. Where was he again?  
  
He forced his eyes open and blinked repeatedly at the roof above him, not really acknowledging the perfectly even pattern of square white tiles made there. He heard something to his left jingle and he rolled his head over a bit.  
  
His wrist was wrapped in plaster and hanging up straight by a collection of cords that tapped the bedpost when he moved. That clue was the one that gave the guessing game away.  
  
Lily had noticed his wrist hanging in a completely different direction than it was supposed to when he tried to stand up again outside NG and had brought him to the hospital. A nurse had given him an injection and anything beyond that point was somewhat sketchy.  
  
Kneeling on the floor with her head resting on the bed Lily slept, dark rings under her eyes and her hair had gone crinkly from the rain.  
  
Ever so carefully Ryuichi wiggled around until he was sitting up, throwing off the drowsiness that plagued his head. He reached over with his right and patted Lily gently on the head.  
  
Slowly with a yawn she lifted her head and looked up at him sleepily, giving a loose smile.  
  
"Have you been here the whole time I've been asleep?" he asked as he rubbed her hair gently.  
  
"Yes, after all, you did the same for me not that long ago."  
  
"I should have stayed with you until you woke up then," Ryuichi sighed and let his hand slide down to her cheek. "Not just until the danger pasted and then leave you with Yuki san."  
  
"Don't worry about it," Lily mumbled and lent into his hand with a deep sigh. "You're here now, that's all that matters."  
  
The curtains around the bed were thrown open to reveal a mass of bodies lying on the ground, cameras and notepads scattered around them.  
  
Lily and Ryuichi both screamed at the sight and the curtain was pulled closed again as Dr Sullivan walked in reading her clipboard.  
  
"Relax Sakuma san," she said casually without looking up. "Some members of the press came by but since I believe that people should mind their own bloody business and I don't like my patients to be disturbed while they recover, I gave them all a ticket to La La Land."  
  
Ryuichi swallowed hard and nodded his head to show that he believed her and she looked up from her clipboard. Her red eyebrows shot up when she saw Lily on the floor holding Ryuichi's good hand.  
  
"We just keep on running into one another don't we Lily?" she said with amusement and looked around with a glare. "Did you bring him with you?"  
  
"No Yuki san isn't here," Lily said recovering from the shock of the bodies lying everywhere. "This is my Dad."  
  
"What a shame, I went to all the effort of making him a nice stew made from Yellow Jasmine and Foxglove," the doctor sighed and shook her head.  
  
"Aren't those flowers poisonous?" Lily asked awkwardly.  
  
She began to wonder if Yuki was right about her being incompetent and dangerous.  
  
"Clever girl you know your flowers."  
  
"Well she is named after one," Ryuichi said proudly to the doctor. "While the Lily white shall in Love delight, nor a thorn nor a threat stain her beauty bright."  
  
"I was always told they represented the purity of Christ," Dr Sullivan said tapping her pen against her bottom lip, "but they always remind me of funerals. You could say that they're a typical death flower. But anyway, we're straying from the original topic. I want to keep you here overnight Sakuma san and I'll give you a whole heap of happy pills before I clear you tomorrow ok?"  
  
"I was kind of hoping that I could take Lily home tonight na no da," he mumbled lowly and looked up at her with his big blue eyes.  
  
"Keep dreaming baby doll," she said coldly and adjusted his IV.  
  
Ryuichi stood holding a bouquet of white lilies as his Lily gently brushed dead leaves off of the marble and pulled out a few dozen scraggly weeds that were climbing upwards, hooking their claws into the engraving.  
  
Christina's grave was a neglected mess compared to the rest of the tombstones surrounding them. The others shone painfully bright in the Wisconsin memorial park with fresh flowers in their pots and not a bit of dirt to be seen.  
  
"She'd think we'd been lazy," Lily said softly as she removed a clump of dirt from the letter T. "It's been over five years since either of us came. The hospital staff let me come once for my birthday."  
  
She smiled a bit and closed her eyes for a few seconds before releasing the ocean blue again.  
  
"Most kids ask for cake."  
  
"I don't think so," Ryuichi responded with a light breeze flicking his fringe. "She knows that we haven't exactly had a walk in the park. Right Christina?"  
  
Lily turned her face skywards to see his solemn expression, his eyes being the only part of him that weren't occupied. His left arm was bandaged up in a blue sling and the white flowers wrapped in paper resting on his right.  
  
"What makes you think she can still hear you?" she asked sceptically.  
  
"What makes you think she can't?" Ryuichi asked with a kind smile at his daughter's lack of romantic sense.  
  
Lily thought about that notion for a minute before continuing to remove leaf litter from the headstone.  
  
"Don't answer a question with a question."  
  
Ryuichi sighed-he would have to start using his brain again if he was going to have debates with Lily. Otherwise she might just make him look bad.  
  
A week ago Dr Sullivan had cleared him from the hospital and his first impulse was to take Lily back to his apartment where he'd always left a room vacant for her.  
  
"All my stuff is at Tohma san's," she'd said playing with her thumbs after K had picked them up in his car.  
  
Those words had meant more than just to say that she'd have to put all her possessions back into her suitcases. She wasn't like Ryuichi. She could not be spun around three times blindfolded and then be told to walk in a straight line. Ryuichi would have to put his impatient impulses aside and take things slowly.  
  
Lily carefully slid the flower stalks into the permanently half-buried pot, a little rusted from battling the elements for nine years. Without crumpling the decoration paper too much the cream trumpets stood brilliantly before the grave.  
  
The two stood for a long time, reading and re-reading the perfectly square letters and watching the bright green leaves sway in the wind.  
  
"For so long I had to see so many people die in hospital," Lily broke the silence, "and to see all the people they left behind grieve. What do we do when we can't help any more?"  
  
In Ryuichi's mind a memory of a crowded roadside and bloody hands were refreshed by those words but he didn't cave in.  
  
"I don't know," he admitted and took a few steps forward. Lily leaned back against him gently but was careful not to knock his wrist. "There will always be grief when those we love leave us but," he tried to think of the best way to phase his scrambled thoughts.  
  
Blue orbs looked up at him expecting an answer to all the questions and his handsome face smiled down at her.  
  
"They didn't die so we would mourn forever. As much as we want your mum back, and as much as we miss her, we must remember that nothing will ever take away the time we had with her."  
  
With a gentle nudge on Lily's back she stood straight and he light-footedly walked over to the tombstone of his loved one.  
  
She watched him crouch down in front of it, expecting him to crumble like he did when he'd pushed her off the road. Instead he wandered in his own thoughts for a long time, his face showing only a small smile.  
  
In her head Lily thought about what her father had just told her. How could a man who had hid and cried into the arms of self-pity say something with such profanity? Was he ready to leave her mother behind and move on with his life?  
  
Ryuichi placed a small kiss on his fingertips before placing his long hand on the grave. A small touch of the romance Christina had only known.  
  
"I wont say goodbye Christina," he spoke loud and clear, unashamed to be speaking to someone beyond the mortal plain of existence. "Because no matter what happens, I'll never let go of you. Right Lily chan?"  
  
He rose and looked at her with pleasant smile and light in his eyes. After a second Lily shook off the confused expression and smiled back.  
  
"Right! I'll never let go either Mum." She paused for a second before she said what she'd wanted to say ever since the music festival.  
  
"Let's go home Dad," she swallowed hard but kept strong eye contact. "Together."  
  
"Mm," Ryuichi nodded his head in agreement, restraining himself from crushing Lily in a hug with his good arm.  
  
The two made their way back onto the main path walking hand in hand.  
  
"Today twelve members of the Barton Beef Export Company were charged and arrested for blackmail, money laundering, embezzlement and fraud along with several other charges today in Wisconsin, America."  
  
Yuki opened his new deck of cigarettes and watched the morning news as Shuichi flew around the apartment trying to get all his things ready for travel at the last minute. He would call out to Yuki asking if he knew where something of his was, but Yuki would never answer because five seconds after asking Shuichi would find whatever it was he was asking about.  
  
"Police were alerted to these crimes after a book kept by the company's founder detailing the time and place of each crime was handed in anonymously to a local station with a note inside reading: 'Screw them, screw them hard!'"  
  
The picture on the TV changed from the newsreader to a collection of men and women being bundled into police cars with handcuffs on. In the background a herd of passers by were looking on intently behind police barricades.  
  
One of those on lookers happened to be a skinny teenage boy in board-shorts and a bucket hat performing some form of funky chicken dance in celebration.  
  
"Barton? Barton? Barton?" the teacher reading out the roll class called out. "You mean to tell me that Lily Barton is away AGAIN?"  
  
Joan smiled to herself as she wrapped her index finger around the end of her right pigtail. If the teacher was spazzing out now about one student being away she couldn't wait to find out what would happen when she hit a certain button on her keyboard.  
  
'I always thought that cracking into the city's electricity mainframe would have been so much harder.'  
  
"Well even without Barton here we shall still do the test,'' the teacher grunted and collected a stack of papers from the desk behind her.  
  
'Fly my little virus fly!'  
  
There was a hum throughout the building and all at once the lights shut off. A buzz of voices rose from all the classrooms in the hall and the teacher flicked the light switch back and forth.  
  
"Excuse me class, I will find out what's going on and be back to start the test."  
  
The classmates started to chat to one another excitedly and after a few minutes their teacher returned, looking suitably peeved.  
  
"The power in the school has gone down," she informed the collection of children all wearing the same clothes, "and by law we cannot have students in the building when the heaters aren't on in winter. Class dismissed."  
  
'I'm so good I scare myself sometimes! Anyway I'd better get to the bus depot.'  
  
"Wait! Wait for me and Kumagoro!"  
  
Shuichi stopped halfway up the bus stairs and looked around. Across the bus depot he saw Ryuichi running with Kumagoro, followed closely by Lily with Joan trailing.  
  
"Shuichi you jerk! You were going to leave without saying goodbye to me!" Lily smacked his arm playfully before giving him a farewell hug.  
  
A very anxious Sakano san begged the singer to make his goodbyes quick so they could get to their first concert but no one was really paying attention. Poor Sakano san, only after two cancellations was he finally fulfilling the company president's request of a nationwide tour.  
  
The first refusal was Yuki's fault and this time Lily had indirectly been to blame. Wanting to put things right before they left, Bad Luck had delayed their tour for close to a month, nearly causing their producer to perform ritualistic suicide with a fountain pen.  
  
"That's a lie!" Shuichi pretended to be hurt by Lily's comment and hugged her back.  
  
Over her shoulder he could see Ryuichi standing next to Joan with Kumagoro hanging off his head. Between the two of them he couldn't figure out who was the mature one (if either of them were).  
  
"Goodbye Lily chan!" Hiro called as he hung leisurely out of the bus window.  
  
"Ah Nakano san!" Lily now had about as much interest in hugging Shuichi as she would a Mexican cactus. "Good luck on tour and please look after Shuichi for me."  
  
"You know if you place lovers over friends you won't have anyone to go running to when you break up," Joan said as she quoted the soap opera she'd watched last night.  
  
Lily went redder than a Chinese New Year dragon with sunburn.  
  
"How do you know I like him?" she hissed in her friend's face as Hiro watched the scene he'd caused with great humour.  
  
"You mean you were trying to keep it a secret?" Shuichi asked weakly with disbelief as he lent into their conversation.  
  
"Shindo san, please," Sakano pulled on his hair anxiously as K reloaded and rolled the chamber of his Cougar Magnum.  
  
"Oh all right," the aspiring youth sniffed to hold back forthcoming tears.  
  
Memories of their elementary school camp were reignited in Hiroshi's mind so he prepared the keyboardist for evasive action.  
  
"Try your best na no da!" Ryuichi punched the air around him playfully and nearly knock Joan's glasses clear off.  
  
"Not only is your Dad full of beans," Joan whispered in Lily's ear as she watched the legend push the bawling Shuichi onto the bus, "he's also super hot!"  
  
Lily's red face turned to green and she held her hands over her mouth as she gagged.  
  
"Joan please," she shook her head fiercely when she'd made sure the vomit was properly suppressed.  
  
It was then she noticed the other person watching the show Shuichi was putting on. With a smile she scooted over to him.  
  
"Good morning Yuki san," she said cheerfully as she stopped next to him in the dark corner of the bus shelter. "How are you?"  
  
The taller man pulled the cigarette away from his mouth and let out a large cloud of smoke to mingle with the early winter air.  
  
"Fine."  
  
"That's good!" Lily was genuinely happy to hear. "Your new novel is coming out today isn't it? It's been promoted in all the papers."  
  
She didn't say anything about wanting to read it because that would have been a lie.  
  
"Yes."  
  
"YUKI!!!!!" Both Hiro and Suguru were physically restraining Shuichi as the bus doors closed with a whistle.  
  
As she watched Shuichi run to the back of the bus and pound his fists on the back window with snot and tears running down his face, Lily wondered if she would ever get used to Shuichi's wild antics.  
  
Not likely.  
  
"Y'now," she said after a minute without the courage to look Yuki in the eye, "if you get lonely while he's gone I could come and visit you."  
  
"Heh," she heard him laugh and took her eyes off the bus disappearing into the crisp morning sky.  
  
Yuki was walking off now, flicking some ash off the end of his cigarette as he went. Had that been a 'if you want' or a 'not a chance?' or a 'we'll just see about that' heh?  
  
"Will he be ok on his own?" Ryuichi popped his head on Lily's shoulder and looked after his ambiguous acquaintance with a hint of worry.  
  
"Yea he won't be able to crush a will to live if Shuichi is gone," Joan asked, hands perched on hips.  
  
"I wouldn't worry about him," Lily said dryly. "I'm sure he's perfectly capable of looking after himself. Besides, I think he likes people more the longer they stay away."  
  
"That's really weird," Joan scrunched her face up and flapped her pigtails. "I begin to miss people when they've been gone for half an hour."  
  
"Yes you're mobile phone bill proves that. When I spoke to Artemis last he told me that he'd been receiving several phone calls in the very early hours of the morning. He wasn't too happy by the way."  
  
"He should learn to chill out a little more," Joan argued with her arms folded over her chest.  
  
"Chill out more?" Lily spluttered at that last comment. "I don't think it's humanly possible to be any more chilled than him! This is the boy who......where's Dad?"  
  
The girls stopped their tennis match of comments and looked all around the bus depot to find Lily's missing parent.  
  
"Dad!"  
  
"Dad!"  
  
"Hey he's not your Dad!" Joan received a frown.  
  
"Whoops," she giggled with a sheepish shrug and corrected herself. "Lily chan's Dad!"  
  
"His name is Ryuichi!" his daughter snapped as she went to look behind a parked bus.  
  
"Well excuse me," Joan huffed and went inside the office building to ask if any of the off shift drivers had seen her latest obsession- and to see if they had any biscuits lying around, it was nearly morning teatime.  
  
She straightened out any crinkles in her jacket so she could play the part of a clean-cut youth and opened the door.  
  
"Excuse me gents but have you-Ryuichi san what are you doing?"  
  
Joan lost her composure at the sight the thirty-two year old presented. He was standing in the empty office building by the electric heater while he oohed and ahhed at a completely fascinating and enigmatic object.  
  
"Joan chan take a look at this!" he squealed excitedly, turning to her so fast that Kumagoro nearly fell of his head.  
  
"Where did you get that?" she asked tipping her head to the left as her brain tried to make sense of her companion.  
  
"I ran off to say goodbye to Yuki san and he said I could play with this today if I let him borrow Lily chan," he nodded zealously with his smile radiating pleasure. "And then a really nice bus driver said I could stay in here while I played with it so Kumagoro wouldn't get cold!"  
  
"So you swapped your daughter for a kaleidoscope?" Joan asked taking the coloured tube from the man's hand.  
  
"Yep, yep, but just for the day though," Ryuichi made sure that Joan understood the full terms of the deal.  
  
"Works for me," she said and propped up her glasses to see the glass pieces form different shapes in the end of the tube.  
  
There was no way that Lily would mind being swapped for a children's toy, after all, she loved Yuki san!  
  
"This is so unfair I hate you!" Lily hissed pointing her finger in Yuki's direction like a holy man would at an unbeliever.  
  
"Feeling's mutual," Yuki replied taking delight in Lily's outrage, "but I must say, to get a day's worth of labour out of you in exchange for a ten yen toy sure is a great deal. And that dress looks great on you, so it'd be a shame to let it go to waste."  
  
Lily didn't think her dress looked great-she loathed it. This time is was a bright yellow, lined with white frills and arm length gloves to accompany it. On her feet she wore yellow buckle-ups with tiny roses on them and in her hair was an abnormally large gold ribbon.  
  
"I'm going to kill you," she said laconically, "and bury you in this dress."  
  
"But Lily chan," Yuki's tone had a derisive note in it. "The sight of that loudmouthed, whimsical, frigid kid made me very lonely inside. Didn't you say you'd visit me if I got lonely? You're breaking my heart."  
  
"This is not a visit!" Lily shouted slamming her fists on the table they were siting behind causing her hair ribbon to bob up and down.  
  
"I meant popping in at your apartment after school or meeting you somewhere for a cup of tea-not to be your lackey! And for the record you're heart is pure black!"  
  
She slumped down in the chair with her arms crossed and pouted like a little kid to show her annoyance, but this only fuelled the slavedriver's blithe feelings.  
  
"Not to worry Lily chan," the grammar particle didn't hold the affection and familiarity Shuichi always added to it. Instead it was used as a form of ridicule. "These next four months you and I will be spending heaps of quality time together."  
  
"Turgid stupid-headed sugar-daddy," Lily let her emotions out in English.  
  
"Oh that's a pay docking," Yuki said very clearly and precisely in fluent English.  
  
His slave cringed and sank a little lower in her chair as the clock's big hand moved to the twelve. The bell attached to bookstore door jingled as the owner allowed the rampant fan girls to flood in.  
  
'Please come back soon Shuichi,' Lily begged him telepathically as she tried to block out all the "cute" and "adorable" that came from the herd of women.  
  
'I can't deal with this man by myself for four whole months, he's a villain! My rock legend over-protective father gets distracted by shiny objects, my best friend thinks that Shakespeare is a dip for chips and my groping other best friend is visiting next school holidays!'  
  
With all that taken into account, Lily had never felt better in her entire life.  
  
THE END  
  
Hikaru's say: And there you have it, sure it took a considerable amount of time but I got there in the end. Thankyou to everyone who reviewed for their support, encouragement, patience and corrections.  
  
I do have a sequel planned but I've honestly got no idea when that will be up because I have very scary and very important mid year exams coming up in a few weeks so I have to spend all of my time studying. Wish me luck! I also want to take the time to plan out the chapters and such next time so there will be a bit of a wait before I sit back in down in my swivel chair. As for what it's about........you'll just have to wait and see. Chapters five and eighteen have been reloaded due to a song translation complication but nothing really major.  
  
Gravitation belongs to its creator Maki Murakami and all song lyrics used are from www.animelyrics.com respectively.  
  
Please leave me with your final thoughts and if anyone starts up any fanfiction or Gravitation website and you want to have this fic on there, just ask me first and I'll be happy to oblige.  
  
Catch ya round!-Hikaru 


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